A global food crisis looms, as crops are diverted to biofuels. Food prices have soared 83 percent in three years. Thousands of U.S. farmers are pulling their land out of the government’s biggest conservation program to plant millions of acres back to crops and pasture. U.S. environmentalists warn that “years of conservation progress” will be lost as America’s 35-million-acre Conservation Reserve dwindles, especially in the important bird-nesting areas of the northern Great Plains.
