After slowing with the collapse of the commodity boom nearly a decade ago, the conversion of grassland to row crops is accelerating in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, said the World Wildlife Fund. Its annual Plowprint report, released on Tuesday, said that nearly 2.6 million acres of grasslands were plowed up in 2019, the most recent year for which reliable data are available.
WWF vice president Martha Kauffman said that “over the last decade, we’ve seen the grasslands of the Great Plains being replaced by cropland at comparable rates to the clearing of the Brazilian Amazon.” The Great Plains extend northward from southern Texas, across a dozen states and into the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The conversion of grasslands slowed to 2.04 million acres in 2017 but rose to 2.15 million acres in 2018, says the environmental group.
The preservation of grasslands, which provide wildlife habitat, should be part of climate mitigation efforts, said the WWF. It suggested several steps, including expanding the Sodsaver provision of crop insurance — which reduces the federal subsidy for crop insurance on newly converted land — so that it applies to more states. It also suggested redesigning biofuel programs to encourage the planting of perennial grasses and cellulosic feedstocks on environmentally sensitive land.
The Plowprint report is available here.