Six members of the Midwest farming community gathered around Louisiana fisherman Lance Nacio earlier this month as he showed family photos and talked about the shrimping business he inherited from his father and grandfather.
“It’s really a culture, just like agriculture,” said Megan Dwyer, a fourth-generation farmer and conservation director for the Illinois Corn Growers Association.
Later that evening, the group discussed the Gulf of Mexico dead zone — the main thing connecting them — over a shrimp boil.
The dead zone is a lifeless expanse caused by excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural fertilizers, that flow from the Midwestern states through the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River basin. Once in the Gulf, the nutrients stimulate algae blooms. When the algae die, they deplete oxygen, creating a condition known as hypoxia that makes the water uninhabitable for aquatic life.
“Our fall catches were terrible,” Nacio told the Tribune. For shrimpers, the fall season began in mid-August, two weeks after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association announced that the Gulf of Mexico dead zone was about the size of New Jersey this year, the 12th largest measurement on record.
The dead zone is one of many factors, including water temperature and storms, that affect catches. But it’s the one that Midwest farmers have a direct impact on.
“Why didn’t I think of doing this before? You know, connecting with some of the fishermen and people in the Gulf,” said Dwyer, who was inspired to organize the Louisiana trip after reading the January Tribune article about agricultural runoff. She brought five colleagues from corn grower associations in neighboring states and the deputy director of environmental policy for the Illinois Farm Bureau to tour Nacio’s farm and venture into the dead zone with experts from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
“Connecting personally with coastal Louisiana allows people to appreciate the complexity of an issue like Gulf hypoxia,” said Jennifer Conover, the consortium’s deputy director of education and outreach. “We really enjoyed the exchange of information, ideas and different perspectives from community members in the Midwest and Louisiana.”
Over-fertilization and loose soil are major contributors to nutrient pollution. State programs actively educate farmers about farming strategies that reduce fertilizer use and increase soil cover, such as no-till and cover crop planting. But transitioning to these practices is costly, and crop yields can be uncertain in the first few years of adoption.
Earlier this month, an Illinois delegation led by Sen. Dick Durbin sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture asking it to double or even triple the federal conservation funds the state receives. Despite ranking fourth in the nation for cropland and tying Iowa as the top producer of nitrogen, Illinois has received less conservation funding than 37 states, according to the letter.
Illinois farmers struggle to balance livelihoods with reduced agricultural runoff, a major contributor to the Gulf dead zone
Illinois farmers are waiting for federal help to switch to conservation practices that could help shrimpers like Nacio. About 40% of valid applications are not funded by the Department of Agriculture, the letter says. Lawmakers blame “inflexible standards” that don’t align with the state’s diversity of soils, microclimates, weather conditions and growing practices.
Cover crops are planted on less than 5 percent of Illinois’ farmland, and only 35 percent is grown with conservation tillage and fertilizer methods, the delegation wrote.
Illinois’ latest progress report concluded that once again the state is on track to miss its nutrient reduction goals.
Meanwhile, the federal government has set a goal of reducing the five-year average size of the dead zone to less than 1,900 square miles, about the size of Rhode Island, by 2035. Currently, the five-year average is more than twice the goal.
Although Dwyer and his colleagues’ visit did not facilitate the adoption of conservation practices, it did create common ground.
“It opened up a dialogue between people who both depend on Mother Nature,” Nacio said. “They understand better that their actions have consequences thousands of miles away from where they farm.”
Dwyer has already scheduled follow-up conversations with consortium researchers, hopes to welcome Nacio to Chicago and plans to send more farmers to the Gulf soon.
