How Nancy Rabalais is incorrect

 I recently watched a TED Talk about dead zones in coral reefs, specifically the dead zone in the gulf of Mexico, and this TED talk, although interesting, caught my attention for a different reason. Nancy Rabalais, the speaker of this TED Talk, significantly stressed Phosphate and Nitrogen run off into the Mississippi river causing this massive dead zone, and openly blamed this on Midwest farmers, who apply these minerals to the soil on their corn and soybean ground. These minerals are often top dressed which means the minerals are sprayed onto the crop and soil at a premature age so these crops can grow as efficiently as possible and spraying you're not limited to a specific crop age, as you are with side dressing. Side dressing is injecting these minerals into the soil between every row of crop, and while this causes less runoff, there is a much smaller time frame to spray, as the corn must be short enough to run the equipment over. 

Rabalais’ speech seemed quite biased and it seems like it strayed from facts and dipped into her personal bias as she talked about her idea of trying to reshape the Midwest from farms growing corn and soybeans to more houses and properties, with the ideology that the Midwest does not feed the United States but it feeds pigs and cattle with this corn and soybeans. But the issue with this ideology is the idea that this livestock feed helps grow the hamburg and bacon and sausage we all buy in the grocery store. Up to 1.7 Billion pounds of Bacon is consumed each year in America alone,   (Bacon) subsequent to the 50 billion hamburgers sold in America each year. (The) 

                                                                    

Another issue I have with Rabalais’ speech is the disregard of trash in the Mississippi river, human caused trash. In 2018 there was over 9 million pounds of trash in the Mississippi, which is responsible for 40% of the trash in the Gulf of Mexico, (Crider) this trash can include anything from textiles to micro plastics and virtually anything people don’t want to take care of. These plastics are damaging the environment but yet Rabalais’ decides to not speak about this trash one bit in her TED talk.

Rabalais’ speech is ineffective and biased towards her opinion, and as she is partially correct that runoff from spraying crops is causing issues in the river she disregards something as simple as trash, which is a huge issue in the Mississippi river, this is causing her listeners to become misinformed and potentially try to close down these essential farms in the Midwest.

Works Cited

"Bacon Facts." Soft Schools, SoftSchools.com, 2020, www.softschools.com/facts/food/bacon_facts/3339/#:~:text=1.7%20billion%20pounds%20of%20bacon,far%20back%20as%201500%20BC. Accessed 4 Jan. 2021.

Crider, Johanna. "Just How Much Trash Is In The Mississippi River?" Clean Technica, 24 Aug. 2020, cleantechnica.com/2020/08/24/just-how-much-trash-is-in-the-mississippi-river/. Accessed 4 Jan. 2021.

"The Hidden Costs of Hamburgers." PBS, News Hour, 2012, www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-hidden-costs-of-hamburgers#:~:text=That's%20a%20national%20total%20of%20nearly%2050%20billion%20burgers%20per%20year. Accessed 4 Jan. 2021.