The canals around the garden are really bad this year. They are all full of algal blooms.
In some places the algae is so thick trash floats on it.
The water plants floating on top here look pretty healthy. When the infestation is a little lighter the ducks and other water birds eat it. I haven’t seen any water birds in the canals for months now. Underneath the surface is slimy green algae.
I don’t know for sure what the cause of these algal blooms are, but I suspect they’re caused by excess phosphorus in the water, and probably excess manure being spread on the surrounding land. Farmers pay land owners to accept their waste manure spread out on it, and this in turn contaminates the water. Because of a soil test I did a few years ago, I already know there’s a lot of phosphorus in the ground and water.
Pig farmers in particular are known right now to be having a problem with excessive manure from their pigs. I suspect this is where at least some of the problem is coming from.
Because the canals are so close to my garden, I suspect this is causing a lot of the problems I’ve been having lately with plants not growing well, and weeds like bindweed growing very quickly. I understand bindweed grows in ground where something is interfering with the natural decomposition of organic material, and I suspect this is being caused by the lack of oxygen in the surrounding canals because of the algae growth.
I’ve been reading in the US, in particular the lakes of Wisconsin, there are similar problems with phosphorus and algal blooms. The formula of dishwasher detergent was recently changed in the US to reduce the amount of phosphorus, which is a very American solution to the problem of factory farm waste. Why not after all blame the consumer with something irrelevant?
If anyone complains about the change in formula of dishwasher detergent, you can look at them with a blank stare and ask them if they believe in unnecessarily polluting the environment, and if anyone complains about the factory farming you can tell them every thing is under control because the formula in dishwasher detergent has been changed.
Anyone else having problems with phosphorus pollution and algal blooms?
How frustrating.
I don’t have algal blooms because here in north Georgia and indeed throughout the whole of Georgia we have been experiencing severe drought conditions. So the streams and small ponds have mostly dried up. A major problem we have in the States is the Gulf of Mexico dead zone/algal blooms primarily from agricultural waste (fertilizer in particular) carried down by the Mississippi River.
It was only a few years ago that we had the worldwide bird flu outbreak, and I was really astonished how there was a big and well organized lie over the situation.
The official word was wild birds and fowl belonging to small holders were spreading the bird flu around. Nothing could really have been further from the truth, and the reality was there were outbreaks at factory farms and wild birds were only carrying it from one factory farm to the next.
Supposedly the solution was to destroy all small holdings, and maybe even cull wild birds! In the end the true solution was to scale down factory bird farms.
In Europe in particular, there is a lot of resistance to factory bird farms. Most European consumers do not accept the concept of cheap supermarket chickens.
While you say algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico are ‘fertilizer in particular’, I think the reality is there’s no reliable source with that kind of public information. In any event everything I’ve been reading the last few days suggests animal waste is probably the largest source of nitrogen and phosphorus in the environment in most places, and there’s a growing world wide crisis because of that.
In particular, in many places like Europe animals are raised on imported feed, and that means in effect phosphorus is being imported. This causes environmental damage at both ends, on one hand a surplus and on the other a shortage.
There are lots of factory farms in Mexico, and I’ll bet many of these are significant contributors to the algal problems in the gulf of Mexico.
Like this video on the last swine flu outbreak:
http://bifurcatedcarrots.eu/2010/01/swine-flu-video/
Patrick – washing detergent residues do contribute significantly to the problem as well as artificial fertiliser and manure runoff into watercourses/groundwater, but I’d have to look up my university notes in the attic to tell you anything more specific that that 🙁 #seniormoment
Hi VP,
If I just search around on the internet for some facts and figures, I see in 2009 the Netherlands imported 9,3 million tons of soy products (meal and oil):
http://commodityplatform.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/soybarometerfinal.pdf
Further from the soy Wikipedia page, I can deduce soy beans are about 0,7% phosphorus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean
I’ll admit I’m missing the proportion of soy meal and soy oil imported into the Netherlands, and what percentage of soy oil is phosphorus, so these calculations are not completely right. They are just an estimation.
Based on these numbers I estimate the Netherlands imports about 65100 tons, or 65100000Kg of phosphorus, equivalent to about 4Kg for every person in the Netherlands (there are 16 million people here).
Certainly some of this phosphorus is exported in the form of agricultural products, but I think percentage wise the amount is pretty small. Let’s just estimate 10%, meaning of the 4Kg per person of phosphorus imported via soy, about 3,6Kg remains in the country.
Both my dishwasher and laundry soap are a little vague when it comes to how much phosphorus they contain, the label says between 5-15%, so lets assume 10%.
This means the amount of phosphorus imported into the Netherlands via soy might be compared with 36Kg of detergent, or about 3Kg of detergent per month, per person.
I don’t know about any of you out there, but Steph and I don’t use anything close to that. I think for the two of us together probably use at most 1Kg, or 500g each. To be honest, I don’t think we really use that much.
Based on this estimate, the amount of phosphorus in imported soy is about 6 times greater than what’s in household detergents here.
A few more things to take into account. City sewage systems here treat the sewage to remove some of the phosphorus before it’s released into the environment, and I’m pretty sure animal waste is not treated. Also the import numbers for soy were from 2009, and I’m pretty sure they are much higher now, maybe as much as 50% higher. I also know they have been reducing the amount of phosphorus in detergents here, which may be why they are not clear about this on the labels.
In my opinion, yes, household detergents probably play a role in the amount of phosphorus in the environment. Probably what people eat plays a role too, for example people who eat a lot of animal products probably have some more phosphorus in their toilet waste. I suspect however, no matter what other sources of phosphorus may exist, everything is dwarfed by the amount of phosphorus in agricultural waste.
If anyone would like to criticize or refine my calculations here, I would be interested!