Where Corn Pollutes America Most, and Who’s Responsible
The magnitude of fluorescence portrayed in this visualization prompted researchers to take a closer look at the productivity of the U.S. corn belt. The glow represents land plants in early July, over a period from 2007 to 2011.
Source: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Not every day does an obscure scientific report directly help massive U.S. companies looking to cut costs, use natural resources more efficiently, and make sure their customers know about it. And yet Labor Day saw the quiet unveiling of a project that provides minute detail—down to individual factories—of the movement of corn along America’s sprawling meat and ethanol supply chains.
The ramifications of being able to tie pollution and water use to specific amounts of desirable commodities, and in specific locations, cannot be overstated at a time of accelerating climate change. The opaque title of the Sept. 4 study, however, fails to give away what’s going on. “Subnational mobility and consumption-based environmental accounting...” In English, what the researchers have done is broken out granular geographic information about where corn is produced and transported within two industries that consume it most—meat and ethanol.