Goodbye Grasslands, Hello Corn
A new paper by South Dakota State University researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science looked at recent land-use changes in what they call the "western corn belt"—North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska between 2006 and 2011. What they found was that grasslands in that region are being sacrificed to the plow at a clip "comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia." According to the researchers, you have to go back to the 1920s and 1930s—the "era of rapid mechanization of US agriculture"—to find comparable rates of grassland loss in the region. All told, nearly two million acres of grassland—an area nearly the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined—succumbed to the plow between 2006 and 2011, they found. Just 663,000 acres went from corn/soy to grassland during that period, meaning a net transfer of 1.3 million acres to the realm of King Corn.
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/king-corn-gobbles-climate-stabilizing-grassland-midwest
From my own observations in N.E. Ohio I'd also add that more farms are harvesting the entire corn plant down to almost nothing. Combined with the increased use of weed killers this leaves mostly fields of mud wherever corn or soy is planted and I'm seeing more and more of that too. These practices have a large effect on a variety of wildlife which includes migrating waterfowl that used to feed in these fields. It seems that modern farming practices have turned to destroying more than giving and it wouldn't surprise me to see a return of "dust bowl" conditions in the midwest.
The native lands of upland birds did not depend on farming, those birds evolved and depend on grassland and shrubland habitats more than anything else.
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A new paper by South Dakota State University researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science looked at recent land-use changes in what they call the "western corn belt"—North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska between 2006 and 2011. What they found was that grasslands in that region are being sacrificed to the plow at a clip "comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia." According to the researchers, you have to go back to the 1920s and 1930s—the "era of rapid mechanization of US agriculture"—to find comparable rates of grassland loss in the region. All told, nearly two million acres of grassland—an area nearly the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined—succumbed to the plow between 2006 and 2011, they found. Just 663,000 acres went from corn/soy to grassland during that period, meaning a net transfer of 1.3 million acres to the realm of King Corn.
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/king-corn-gobbles-climate-stabilizing-grassland-midwest
From my own observations in N.E. Ohio I'd also add that more farms are harvesting the entire corn plant down to almost nothing. Combined with the increased use of weed killers this leaves mostly fields of mud wherever corn or soy is planted and I'm seeing more and more of that too. These practices have a large effect on a variety of wildlife which includes migrating waterfowl that used to feed in these fields. It seems that modern farming practices have turned to destroying more than giving and it wouldn't surprise me to see a return of "dust bowl" conditions in the midwest.
The native lands of upland birds did not depend on farming, those birds evolved and depend on grassland and shrubland habitats more than anything else.
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