Economic impacts from shifting cropland use from food to fuel

Without the availability of idle cropland, biomass energy crops will have t o compete with other crops and pasture land use. In this paper, we investig ate: (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 biom ass crop production on crop and livestock prices, farm income, and the cost of food to consumers. We find it $1-4 billion demand for biomass crops may result in a 2-12% impact on farm sector prices. This impact warrants furth er exploration into estimating the opportunity cost for biomass crop produc tion when idle cropland is not available. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. Al l rights reserved.