High Crop Prices and Insurance Seen Causing Catastrophe
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Sustained high prices for corn, soybeans and wheat combined with record U.S. crop-insurance payouts are encouraging farmers to plow fragile lands and put ecosystems at risk, an environmental advocacy group said.
Northern Plains counties have seen the highest conversion of animal habitats and erodible lands into cropland, Environmental Working Group said today in a study of U.S. planting patterns from 2008 to 2012. About 5.3 million acres of fragile lands and 1.9 million acres of wetlands were plowed, the group said, an area slightly larger than Massachusetts.