Will large amounts of soil carbon be released to the atmosphere if grasslands are converted to energy crops?

Grasslands in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the United States may be increasingly converted to growing bioenergy grain crops.

Questions abound regarding the fate of carbon sequestered in the soil during the CRP program by perennial grasses if the land is converted to grain crop production and the potential effectiveness of no-till production systems to conserve the sequestered soil organic carbon (SOC). The effect of no-till conversion of land that had been in smooth bromegrass for 13 years to no-till corn production on soil organic carbon in eastern Nebraska was observed for 6 years by USDA scientists.

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