The purpose of this research was to determine whether indirect land use occurs and if so to what extent. Indirect land use is a change from non-cropland to cropland (e.g. deforestation) that may occur in response to increasing scarcity of cropland. As farmers worldwide respond to higher crop...

Developing fuels and vehicles that reduce our reliance on fossil fuels has become a priority due to the threat of global climate change and desire for reduced dependence on oil imports. Flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on ethanol/gasoline blends of up to 85% ethanol and hybrid electric...

The recent 9-billion-gallon increase in corn-based ethanol production, which resulted from a combination of rising gasoline prices and a suite of Federal bioenergy policies, provides evidence of how farmers altered their land-use decisions in response to increased demand for corn. As some...

We model the energy–agriculture linkage through structural vector autoregression (VAR) model. This model quantifies the relative importance of various contributing factors in driving prices in both markets. The LiNGAM algorithm from the machine learning literature is used to help identify...

This paper analyzes the impact of an ethanol import tariff in conjunction with a consumption mandate and tax credit. A tax credit alone acts as a subsidy to ethanol producers, equally benefiting exporters like Brazil. If an import tariff is imposed to offset the tax credit, world prices of...

A global multi-commodity simulation model was developed to estimate the impact of changes in ethanol production on the U.S. corn industry. Increased ethanol production under the Energy Acts of 2005 and 2007 resulted in a significant increase in the price of corn. However, for corn-based ethanol...

Corn stover harvest and transport cost functions were estimated for two harvest operations for a proposed biomass-to-ethanol conversion facility located in southern Minnesota, USA. This work presents an alternative methodology to estimating corn stover quantities and harvest costs at the county...

This paper examines the possibilities of breaking into the cellulosic ethanol market in south Louisiana via strategic feedstock choices and the leveraging of the area’s competitive advantages. A small plant strategy is devised whereby the first-mover problem might be solved, and several...