 Corn Ethanol Growth in the US Without Adverse Foreign Land Use Change: Defining Limits and Devising PoliciesPaul W. Gallagher Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Abstract: This study addresses the question: ‘How does a 15 billion gallon per year renewable fuel standard (RFS) compare to the capacity of the US corn market to generate necessary input supplies for the ethanol industry?' The analysis accounts for adjustments in world corn and soybean markets, including corn technology improvements (yield increases) that allow substantial production growth on the existing corn area, and byproduct (DDG) replacement of displaced corn-feed demand. Our midpoint estimate suggests that increased production on foreign lands only accounts for a small fraction (6%) of the RFS demand expansion. Further, corn yield response to moderate price increases would likely offset much of the foreign production increase. US policies that could sever any remaining link between US ethanol expansion and environmentally sensitive regions of the world feed economy are discussed. Keywords: renewable fuel standard; US ethanol industry; land-use change; corn yield response (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Biofuels, Bioproducts, & Biorefining, May/June 2010, vol. 4 no. 3, pp. 296-309 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:31350 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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