Economic impacts from shifting cropland use from food to fuel

Without the availability of idle cropland, biomass energy crops will have to compete with other crops and pasture land use. In this paper, we investigate: (a) the economic feasibility of using cropland, traditionally used for pasture, hay and other commodity crops, for production of biomass crops to be used as an energy source for electric utilities; (b) the impact of biomass crop production on crop and livestock prices, farm income, and the cost of food to consumers. We find a $1–4 billion demand for biomass crops may result in a 2–12% impact on farm sector prices. This impact warrants further exploration into estimating the opportunity cost for biomass crop production when idle cropland is not available.