The price of corn has hit $6 per bushel, and the rate for the Conservation Reserve Program has not kept up, says an article in the Minneapolis StarTribune. That means more farmers are converting the prairie and pothole acres that had been preserved on the Conservation Reserve Program to corn production.

That’s bad news for ducks. (It’s also bad news for pheasant, but that is more of an economic issue than an ecological one.)

Read all the details in the Minneapolis StarTribune, here.

What this excellent article doesn’t mention is that Congress failed to renew the ethanol tax credit, which expired on the last day of 2011. The New York Times says the expiration of the tax credit won’t impact the price of corn or the demand for ethanol.

Photo: Mallard drake by Erwin and Peggy Bauer, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service