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Eric Schimd

Eric Schmid covers Economic Development for St. Louis Public Radio
  • Scientists from Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) aboard the Research Vessel Pelican are collecting data to measure the size of the Gulf's dead zone in the summer of 2024. The results found the dead zone, a low-oxygen area caused primarily by the over-application of synthetic fertilizer on Midwest farms, was approximately 6,705 square miles. In order to survive, fish, shrimp, and other species need to flee an area the size of New Jersey.
    The True Cost of Fertilizer
    Carlyle Calhoun
    This is the story of modern fertilizer, and how this powerful concoction of chemicals has radically reshaped how we farm and what we eat. In this episode, we follow the journey of fertilizer from Louisiana to the Midwest, then back down along the Mississippi River to a place it creates in the Gulf. A place called: The Dead Zone.