Abstract
This study investigates the consequences of agricultural technological progress, biofuel policy, and agricultural demand growth on crop, livestock, and bioenergy markets, as well as resource usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, over data in the United States. We formed scenarios for future technological progress, demand growth, and biofuel policy and carried out a dynamic simulation. The major findings are: (1) Increasing technological progress reduces cropland for biofuel and cropland pasture for livestock but increases cropland for crop production; (2) Reducing corn ethanol requirements causes more cropland to move from cropping to pasture uses for livestock, however, lowering ethanol from corn residue has minor effects on cropland use; (3) Lowering the requirement of ethanol from corn lowers the price for most of the field crops and meat commodities, especially corn, hay, sorghum, and non-fed beef; (4) Technological progress and biofuel policy have significant effects of on GHG emissions. Increasing technical progress reduces overall GHG emissions. A lower corn ethanol level results in much larger GHG emissions as compared with the control case. This implies producing corn ethanol is effective in reducing emissions; and (5) Technological improvement is a key factor in meeting growing global demand for food and energy and reducing emissions.
Highlights
Besides the basic roles as a food supplier for mankind, the agricultural sector is playing an important role as a source of feedstocks for bioenergy production
Cropland based on biofuel requirements, demand growth,growth, and technological progress; Cropland use usediffers differs based on biofuel requirements, demand and technological cropland biofuelfor production rises substantially in 2020, is followed by the decrease progress; U.S for cropland biofuel production rises substantially in 2020, is followed by the
We examined the technological progress effects on the three aspects as follows: (1) cropland used for biofuel production, crop production, and cropland pasture used for livestock; (2) conventional commodity prices; and (3) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
Summary
Besides the basic roles as a food supplier for mankind, the agricultural sector is playing an important role as a source of feedstocks for bioenergy production. Production and processing of agricultural commodities for bioenergy have gained a lot of attention because bioenergy is renewable and potentially beneficial in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1]. In the United States, the production of bioenergy has increased with the implementation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). The program sets a mandatory level of renewable fuel blended into transportation fuel. The eligible forms of renewable fuel in the program are required to have a lower level of GHG emissions compared to petroleum-based fuels. EISA raised the requirement for the amount of renewable fuel blended from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022 progress toward this has been slower than anticipated. The RFS requirements for renewable fuel blending have stimulated increased biofuel production
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