2024 Plowprint Report

In 2022‚ – the year this report examines‚ – approximately 1.9 million acres of grasslands were converted to croplands across the US and Canadian portions of the Great Plains region. This figure, while significant, represents a slight improvement from the previous 10-year average of 2.6 million acres per year. In the Northern Great Plains region, which represents one of the world‚'s four largest intact temperate grasslands, 480,000 acres‚ – an area 2x the size of New York City‚ – were converted in 2022. This is lower than the 10-year average of about 630,000 acres per year, but, as with conversion across the Great Plains, this is not an acceptable level of loss.