Major impacts of the US Renewable Fuel Standard on corn and soybean cultivation
Date
2024-09
Authors
Smith, T. Jake
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Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Agricultural and Applied Economics Association
Abstract
We use rich spatial data on observed crop choices and ethanol production to estimate the local impacts of ethanol plants and the overall impact of the 2007 US Renewable Fuel Standard (the RFS2) on crop patterns. We find that the RFS2 increased total corn area by 9.7%, corn monoculture by 16.8%, and soybean area by 6.7%, with notable spatial heterogeneity in both the overall impact and the local effects of ethanol plants. The results indicate an RFS2-induced shift in the geography of corn and soybean cultivation within the Corn Belt—intensification in the core, and significant expansion near the periphery.
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JEL Classification: Q15, Q16, C31, C35
This article is published as Smith, T. Jake, and GianCarlo Moschini. "Major impacts of the US Renewable Fuel Standard on corn and soybean cultivation." Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association 3 (2024): 584-599. doi:10.1002/jaa2.134.
This article is published as Smith, T. Jake, and GianCarlo Moschini. "Major impacts of the US Renewable Fuel Standard on corn and soybean cultivation." Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association 3 (2024): 584-599. doi:10.1002/jaa2.134.
Rights Statement
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Funding
National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, through a National Needs Fellowship, Grant/Award Number: 2015‐38420‐23694.