Over the past decade, high commodities prices have encouraged and accelerated the conversion of our native grasslands to cultivated cropland. According to the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), between 2011 and 2012, nearly 400,000 acres of grassland and other non-cropland across the United States were plowed up or otherwise converted to cropland.

Stephanie Bertagnoli once said she would never move back to Nebraska. After growing up on a conventional farm in Utica she left for Colorado Christian University near Denver, where she met her husband Tim, a “city boy.” She thought that’s where they would stay, until one day when she was driving home to Nebraska during calving season.