Ethanol profits are rapidly destroying the pristine grasslands of the Great Plains. Over 1.2 million acres, an area the size Rhode Island plus New York City and Los Angeles, have has been plowed open and seeded for ethanol corn crops in the past seven years. From sfgate.com we read: What the green-energy program has made profitable, however, is far from green. A policy intended to reduce global warming is encouraging a farming practice that actually could worsen it. That's because plowing into untouched grassland releases carbon dioxide that has been naturally locked in the soil. It also increases erosion and requires farmers to use fertilizers and other industrial chemicals. In turn, that destroys native plants and wipes out wildlife habitats. Chemicals kill the grass. Machines remove the rocks. Then tractors plow it three times to break up the sod and prepare it for planting. More than 1.2 million acres of grassland have been lost since the federal government...(Read Full Post)