Fertilizer Company Reaps Rewards Of Ethanol Boom

With any energy source there are winners and losers.

With corn ethanol, the alternative fuel championed by Midwest corn farmers and national politicians, one winners is the 16-year old Terra Nitrogen, the world's largest producer of urea ammonium nitrate, a popular fertilizer. Its profits -- along with those of others in its class of chemical-fertilizer manufacturers and importers -- have surged, defying the dismal market logic of recent weeks.

The loser? The entire Gulf of Mexico, or at least that New Jersey-sized portion expected to be drained of life because of all that fertilizer running off of fields in the Mississippi valley. Fertilizer doesn't just help crops grow, but -- when washed into streams and eventually out to sea by rain -- it helps algae grow. The algae in the Gulf of Mexico blooms so prolifically that it sucks all the oxygen out of the water, creating a lifeless "dead zone."

Not surprisingly, Gulf Coast fishing fleets don't look forward to late summer, when the algae bloom takes away their fish and their profits. This year, with corn plantings at a half century high because of government subsidies for corn ethanol, the dead zone is predicted to be the largest on record.

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