The Most Overlooked Environmental Crisis of 2017 | New Republic
▻https://newrepublic.com/article/146195/overlooked-environmental-crisis-2017
Une synthèse sur le rôle néfaste de l’#élevage et de l’#alimentation_animale par le #maïs sur le #climat, la #potabilité, l’#environnement_aquatique, l’#extinction, la #santé...
The meat industry’s main problem is its reliance on corn to feed animals. In 2016, corn crops caused most of the 1.15 million metric tons of nutrient #pollution —excess nitrogen and phosphorus, mostly from fertilizer runoff—that was released into the Gulf. Thirty-six percent of those corn crops are used to feed chicken, cows, and pigs, most of which are eventually eaten by humans. As meat production increases, corn demand rises, producing more nutrient pollution and a bigger dead zone. The dead zone is bad for obvious reasons—as a concerned citizen once told Scavia, “8,000 square miles of no oxygen has got to be a bad thing”—but it also has consequences for humans, as it could decimate the Gulf shrimp industry.
This map provided by NOAA shows how water pollution from farmland flows downstream into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a “dead zone” that cannot support marine life. The red dots indicate cities; lime green areas indicate farmland; and the yellow area is the dead zone.#agriculture #bétail #engrais_chimiques #zone_morte #carbone #politique