The Optimality of Using Marginal Land for Bioenergy Crops: Tradeoffs between Food, Fuel, and Environmental Services

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2016-08-01
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Valcu-Lisman, Adriana
Kling, Catherine
Gassman, Philip
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EconomicsCenter for Agricultural and Rural Development
Abstract

We assess empirically how agricultural lands should be used to produce the highest valued outputs, which include food, energy, and environmental goods and services. We explore efficiency tradeoffs associated with allocating land between food and bioenergy and use a set of market prices and nonmarket environmental values to value the outputs produced by those crops. We also examine the degree to which using marginal land for energy crops is an approximately optimal rule. Our empirical results for an agricultural watershed in Iowa show that planting energy crops on marginal land is not likely to yield the highest valued output.

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This article is from Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 45 (2016): 217-245, doi:10.1017/age.2016.20. Posted with permission.

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Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2016
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