Ethanol and a changing agricultural landscape

Drovers
Drovers news source Monday, November 16, 2009

Meeting renewable-fuel targets will require more corn acreage, use more fertilizer, create more runoff and reduce returns to livestock producers, according to a new USDA report. The report, titled “Ethanol and a Changing Agricultural Landscape outlines how the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 established specific targets for the production of biofuel in the United States.

Until advanced technologies become commercially viable, meeting these targets will increase demand for traditional agricultural commodities used to produce ethanol, resulting in land-use, production, and price changes throughout the farm sector. This report summarizes the estimated effects of meeting the EISA targets for 2015 on regional agricultural production and the environment. Meeting EISA targets for ethanol production is estimated to expand U.S. cropped acreage by nearly 5 million acres by 2015, an increase of 1.6 percent over what would otherwise be expected. Much of the growth comes from corn acreage, which increases by 3.5 percent over baseline projections. Water quality and soil carbon will also be affected, in some cases by greater percentages than suggested by changes in the amount of cropped land. The economic and environmental implications of displacing a portion of corn ethanol production with ethanol produced from crop residues are also estimated.

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