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team. Taft was the first president to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a season opener.
• Tom Davis, entertainment manager for the National League team, said the group had a fun time in the Black Hills and were thrilled they were finally able to make the trip.
• "We've been thinking about it for a while, toying with the idea," Davis said. "With last year being as exciting as it was both on and off the field, we decided to keep it fresh and do something different."
• Last season, the Nationals won 98 regular-season games and the NL East crown, but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLDS.
• "This is such a great opportunity to showcase everything we have to offer in the Black Hills," said Nort Johnson, president of the Black Hills, Badlands, and Lakes Association, who donned a Nationals baseball cap for the occasion.
• Decked out in a Washington Nationals jersey and hat in Rapid City's Main Street Square, Edward Miller was excited to see the mascots in person.
• "It's so great to see them," said Miller, who moved to Sturgis two years ago from Washington, D.C. "I've never seen them this close up before."
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Study documents conversion of grassland to crops
DIRK LAMMERS,Associated Press
• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- A new study documents a loss of 1.3 million acres of grassland over a five-year period in the Western Corn Belt -- a rate not seen since the 1920s and 1930s.
• The research by Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of the Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence at South Dakota State University said a recent doubling in commodity prices has created incentives for landowners in South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa to convert grassland to corn and soybean cropping.
• "Historically, comparable grassland conversion rates have not been seen in the Corn Belt since the 1920s and 1930s, the era of rapid mechanization of US agriculture," the authors wrote.
• The study is published in Tuesday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
• It found that corn and soy production has expanded onto marginal lands with high potential for erosion and drought. The authors compared the land use change rate in the Western Corn Belt to the deforestation of Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia, (Continued on page 16)
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