Sea of Grass : The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie

Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie, by journalists Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty, traces the ecological transformation of North America's grasslands. European settlers saw the prairie as "an alien and forbidding place" rather than a thriving ecosystem, and technologies like the steel plow and artificial drainage let farmers convert vast stretches of it into some of the world's most productive farmland, fueling industrial growth and global food production, but at enormous cost: Indigenous displacement, polluted rivers, and the loss of native wildlife. The authors show that industrial agriculture continues to convert roughly a million acres of grassland every year, and the book looks at how farmers, policymakers, and consumers might work together to protect what remains of the prairie while keeping farming communities economically viable.