The soil begins to erode rapidly. Some of these lands, as Americans, we all own. These government agencies lease the land to ranchers for practically nothing. The other reason why we lose money is that these agencies also provide water and irrigation to ranchers at a minimal cost. It is not just grasses and prairies that are being wiped out, but trees and forests are being destroyed also.
Desertification is heavily a result of deforesation.
The American appetite for beef is so strong that other countries want to profit off of this, and many times they look at the American lifestyle in efforts to emulate us, hence the growing number of McDonalds accepted around the world. Again, without the soil- stabilizing trees and plants, it becomes hardened earth and then dust. Rain can't penetrate the hard land to seep down into underground watersheds, and our wells run dry. We'll have vast deserts where half of the U.S. rangelands and the various rain forests were. We all must live with the same atmosphere that surrounds Earth.