14 DAY TRIAL // Back in 2005, some 34 million acres of grasslands in the United States were enrolled in the country's Conservation Reserve Program.
Otherwise put, farmers received money from the country's Department of Agriculture on a regular basis in exchange for letting these lands be and not using them to grow crops or livestock.
Over the years, the land surface included in the Conservation Reserve Program was reduced by about 25% when compared to its 2005 levels.
What's more, NPR says that, this year alone, 1.6 million acres of grasslands in the United States were pulled from said initiative.
For the most part, these 1.6 million acres were turned into agricultural lands. Thus, they are now used to grow crops such as corn and wheat, the same source details.
By the looks of it, the total surface of the grasslands that have been converted in the United States since the beginning of 2013 until present day is similar to the area of the state of Delaware.
According to ecologist Carter Johnson with the South Dakota State University, not converting grasslands into agricultural lands and protecting them instead yields noteworthy benefits in terms of environmental protection.
Thus, such regions house many plant and animal species, and also help limit fertilizer runoff.
Besides, grasslands have been documented to act as carbon sinks, meaning that they help fight back climate change and global warming by absorbing some of the carbon dioxide released into our planet's atmosphere on a yearly basis.
“Goodness, there's thousands of species that live in grasslands, including several hundred species of higher plants,” ecologist Carter Johnson says.
“With those deeps roots that grasses have, and thick thatch, the water has a hard time getting a hold of the soil,” he goes on to explain.
According to NPR, people in the United States have started to turn grasslands into agricultural lands instead of protecting them due to the fact that funding for the Conservation Reserve Program has been reduced, and because the price of grains in the country has upped.