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Program, in which old farmland is allowed to return to a near-natural state. The AP used half-acre sections of earth and excluded tiny tracts that became corn, which experts said were most likely outliers.
• Corn prices more than doubled in the years after Congress passed the ethanol mandate in 2007. Now, Malsam said, farmers can make about $500 an acre planting corn.
• His farm has just become profitable in the past five years, allowing him and his wife, Theresa, to build a new house on the farmstead.
• Four miles south, signs at each end of the town of Roscoe announce a population of only 324. But the town, which relies in part on incomes like Malsam's, supports a school, a restaurant, a bank, a grocery store and a large farm machinery store.
• The manager of the equipment dealership, Kaleb Rodgers, said the booming farm economy has helped the town and the dealership prosper. The business with 28 employees last year sold a dozen combines at about $300,000 apiece, plus more than 60 tractors worth between $100,000 and $300,000, he said.
• "If we didn't have any farmers we wouldn't have a community here. We wouldn't have a business. I wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't be able to feed my family," Rodgers said. "I think ethanol is a very good thing."
• Jim Faulstich, president of the South Dakota Grasslands Coalition, said the nation's ethanol and crop insurance policies have encouraged the transformation of the land.
• Faulstich, who farms and ranches in central South Dakota near Highmore, said much of the land being converted is not suited to crop production, and South Dakota's strong winds and rains will erode the topsoil.
• "I guess a good motto would be to farm the best and leave the rest," he said.
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