Effect of corn ethanol production on Conservation Reserve Program acres in the US

Xiaoguang Chen and Madhu Khanna

Applied Energy, 2018, vol. 225, issue C, 124-134

Abstract: The increase in corn ethanol production has raised concerns about its indirect impacts on the expansion of cropland and implications for the environment and continues to be a controversial issue. In particular, land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) declined by 7.2 million acres between 2007 and 2012 while corn ethanol production more than doubled. However, the extent to which this decline in CRP acres can be causally attributed to increased ethanol production is yet to be determined. Using a dynamic, partial equilibrium economic model for the US agricultural sector we find that doubling of corn ethanol production over the 2007–2012 period (holding all else constant) led to the conversion of 3.2 million acres of unused cropland, including 1 million acres in CRP, to crop production. While substantial in magnitude, we find that these land use changes due to biofuel production accounted for only 16% and 13% of the total reduction in unused cropland and in CRP acres, respectively, that occurred over the 2007–2012 period. We also find that the land use change per million gallons of corn ethanol has declined non-linearly over time from 453 acres to 112 acres over the 2007–2012 period.

Keywords: Corn ethanol; Food prices; Conservation Reserve Program; Unused cropland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191830669X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:225:y:2018:i:c:p:124-134

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.04.104

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().