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farmed from since 2006. In Edmunds County, a rural community about two hours north of the capital, Pierre, at least 42,000 acres of grassland have become cropland -- one of the largest turnovers in the region.
• Malsam runs a 13-square-mile family farm there. He grows corn, soybeans and wheat, then rents out his grassland for grazing. Each year, the family converts another 160 acres from grass to cropland.
• Chemicals kill the grass. Machines remove the rocks. Then tractors plow it three times to break up the sod and prepare it for planting.
• Scattered among fields of 7-foot tall corn and thigh-high soybeans, some stretches of grassland still exist. Cattle munch on some grass. And "prairie potholes" -- natural ponds ranging from small pools to larger lakes -- support a smattering of ducks, geese, pelicans and herons.
• Yet within a mile of Malsam's farm, federal satellite data show, more than 300 acres of grassland have been converted to soybeans and corn since 2006.
• Nebraska has lost at least 830,000 acres of grassland, a total larger than New York City, Los Angeles and Dallas combined.
• "It's great to see farmers making money. It hasn't always been that way," said Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group. He advocates for clean energy but opposes the ethanol mandate. "If we're going to push the land this hard, we really need to intensify conservation in lockstep with production, and that's just not happening," he said.
• Jeff Lautt, CEO of Poet, which operates ethanol refineries across the country, including in South Dakota, said it's up to farmers how to use their land.
• "The last I checked, it is still an open market. And farmers that own land are free to farm their land to the extent they think they can make money on it or whatever purpose they need," he said.
• Yet Chris Wright, a professor at South Dakota State University who has studied land conversion, said: "The conversation about land preservation should start now before it becomes a serious problem." Wright reviewed the AP's methodology for determining land conversion.
• The AP's analysis used government satellite data to count how much grassland existed in 2006 in each county, then compare each plot of land to corresponding satellite data from 2012.
• The data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Agriculture identify corn and soybean fields. That allowed the AP to see which plots of grassland became cropland.
• To reach its conservative estimate of 1.2 million acres lost, the AP excluded grassland that had been set aside under the government's Conservation Reserve

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