Market Interactions, Farmer Choices, and the Sustainability of Growing Advanced Biofuels

This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data

Market Interactions, Farmer Choices, and the Sustainability of Growing Advanced Biofuels

Author Info

Jiang, Yong
Swinton, Scott M.

Abstract

Advanced biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol are of great interest for their potential to supply a significant portion of U.S. fuel needs plus advantages over corn grain-based ethanol. The sustainability of agriculture-based advanced biofuels depends on how farmers would respond in providing biomass feedstock, yet economic behavior by farmers has been under recognized by the science community. Focusing on markets and policy incentives, this research shows that farmers are unlikely to convert current grain cropland to grow a dedicated cellulosic biomass crop such as switchgrass. However, the financial incentives to harvest cellulosic biomass provided by the 2008 farm bill may stimulate corn production due to demand for corn grain for feed and ethanol and corn residues for advanced biofuels. The prospect of continuous, possibly expanding corn production for advanced biofuels raises the same environmental issues as for corn grain-based ethanol. To assure the environmental sustainability of advanced biofuels production, environmental policies are needed to complement existing bioenergy initiatives.

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

Publisher Info
Paper provided by Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics in its series Staff Papers with number 43634.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: Sep 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ags:midasp:43634

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 202 Agriculture Hall, East Lansing MI 48824-1039
Phone: (517) 355-4563
Fax: (517) 432-1800
Email:
Web page: http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/
More information through EDIRC

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (AgEcon Search).

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

Searchinger, Timothy & Heimlich, Ralph & Houghton, R. A. & Dong, Fengxia & Elobeid, Amani & Fabiosa, Jacinto F. & Tokgoz, Simla & Hayes, Dermot J. & Yu, Tun-Hsiang (Edward), 2008. "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change," Staff General Research Papers 12881, Iowa State University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
Hallam, A. & Anderson, I. C. & Buxton, Dr. R., 2002. "Comparative Economic Analysis of Perennial, Annual and Intercrops for Biomass Production," Staff General Research Papers 5076, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
Duffy, Michael, 2008. "Estimated Costs for Production, Storage, and Transportation of Switchgrass," Staff General Research Papers 12917, Iowa State University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]

Full references

Statistics
Access and download statistics

Did you know? All top Economics journals are listed on RePEc.

This page was last updated on 2009-12-11.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.