Some 1.9 million acres of grasslands in the Great Plains, which extend from Texas to the prairie provinces of Canada, were converted to cropland in 2022, said the World Wildlife Fund on Thursday in its annual Plowprint report. “While this figure’s significance cannot be downplayed, it marks an improvement from the previous 10-year average of 2.6 million acres annually,” said the group.
Roughly 55 percent of the grasslands of the Plains remain intact. “Every cut from the plow has significant consequences for wildlife, carbon storage, and clean water,” said Martha Kauffman, vice president of the WWF’s Northern Great Plains project. “With appreciation for grasslands on the rise, now is the time for increased investment and policies to save what’s left.”
The organization called for strengthening the farm bill’s long-standing Sodbuster provisions, which discourage the conversion of highly erodible land to cropland, and for bolstering the Grasslands Conservation Reserve Program, which pays landowners a small annual rent if they maintain areas as grazing lands.
The Plowprint report is available here.