SEA OF GRASS

A sweeping history of the American prairie, “a region we have exploited almost to death.”

Not many people take their vacations on the American plains, an area definitively dismissed as “the flyover zone.” Yet, as Minneapolis journalists Hage and Marcotty write, “the North American prairie is nonetheless one of the richest ecosystems on Earth,” along with its “siblings” in Central Asia, South America, and southern Africa. For all that importance—just one of the three main divisions of the prairie harbors 1,600 species of grass and flowers—much of the prairie is gone; a scant 1%, the authors write, exists in the eastern tallgrass prairie that once extended from Illinois to eastern Kansas. Whereas past civilizations collapsed after unknowingly exhausting their farmlands, the authors write meaningfully, we do so fully aware of that damage. This is all the more so in an era of rapid climate change, for the hidden underground world of the prairie and the root systems of its vegetation serve as “one of the world’s last great buffers” against it, with grasses sequestering carbon dioxide deep beneath the surface. Row crops such as corn and soybeans, conversely, store that carbon dioxide far closer to the surface, releasing it in plowing—and in any event, growing those crops requires vast quantities of fossil fuels, some in the form of synthetic fertilizers that poison watercourses and have destroyed much of the sea life in the Gulf of Mexico. To battle the negative effects of pollution, climate change, and industrial agriculture, Hage and Marcotty argue for restoring large sections of grassland to their original state and, even more politically sensitive, eliminating the federal subsidy for corn ethanol. They also propose a different crop regime that would increase ground cover, preserve the soil, and—importantly—allow farmers to make a profit at the same time.

A welcome addition to the literature of America’s grasslands, which need all the champions they can get.