{"id":688,"date":"2018-04-15T05:45:53","date_gmt":"2018-04-15T05:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/?p=688"},"modified":"2018-04-15T05:45:53","modified_gmt":"2018-04-15T05:45:53","slug":"how-fisheries-are-related-to-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/2018\/04\/15\/how-fisheries-are-related-to-agriculture\/","title":{"rendered":"How Fisheries are Related to Agriculture"},"content":{"rendered":"

I consider myself an environmentalist, and being an Environmental Studies student, the first thought that comes to mind when learning new topics is \u201chow does it affect the environment\u201d? This new topic is the world food system, and after having read Michael Pollan\u2019s <\/span>In Defense of Food<\/span>, it seems like there is a huge effect on the environment. <\/span><\/p>\n

There is a problem that I knew about previously, and I knew it had to do with United States agriculture, but I didn\u2019t realize how much it didn\u2019t make sense and how deep it is rooted in agriculture. The problem is dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. There are hypoxic conditions in the Gulf of Mexico where animals can\u2019t get enough oxygen to survive. Animals that can\u2019t move, such as shellfish, experience huge die offs, and large fish can attempt escaping, but there have been huge amounts of dead fish as well. First connection to the food system; it\u2019s severely damaging the fishery and hurting the fishing industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

These hypoxic conditions happen when large algal blooms grow and then die. Their decomposition uses up oxygen in the water. These algal blooms are coming from excess nutrients in the water: nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous. The excess nutrients are coming from the farmland in middle of the United States. Much of the nutrients put into the soil on farmlands is runoff into rivers that flow into the Gulf of Mexico. The nutrients are dumped into the farmland because monocropping has effectively stripped large swaths of land of natural nutrients. Joel Salatin has shown that farming with a diversity of crops revives the land of its nutrients. This would call for no, or even just less fertilizer. Less fertilizer would cut down the algal blooms and the hypoxic conditions could decrease significantly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Citations<\/p>\n

Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto<\/i>. Penguin Books, 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cSource: LUMCON.\u201d Mother Jones<\/i>, Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress, 14 Aug. 2013, www.motherjones.com\/food\/2013\/08\/gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-growth\/.<\/p>\n

Save<\/span>Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I consider myself an environmentalist, and being an Environmental Studies student, the first thought that comes to mind when learning new topics is \u201chow does it affect the environment\u201d? This new topic is the world food system, and after having read Michael Pollan\u2019s In Defense of Food, it seems like there is a huge effect on the environment. There is… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}