Abstract. This article examines the impact of the 2012 drought and the biofuels mandate on the U.S. grain and livestock markets and estimates the mandate waiver required to offset the impact on the corn price. The framework used is a stochastic equilibrium displacement model that integrates the beef, pork, and poultry markets with the corn, distillers' grain, soybean, soymeal, and ethanol markets. The corn and beef markets are found to be the most vulnerable. A mandate waiver of approximately 23% is required to fully negate the impact of the drought on corn prices. The waiver is equivalent to a 13.7% reduction in ethanol consumption.

With increasing global population and income, the demand for livestock products continues to grow and is likely to grow in future as well. This raises concerns about the implications of such growth for the environment. A well-known Computable General Equilibrium model (CGE), GTAP-BIO, is used to project the growth of livestock output between 2004 and 2022 and to estimate the land use changes and associated Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Results indicate that the increased livestock output leads to considerable increase in pasture (about 45 million hectares) and decrease in forest area (about 44 million hectares) between 2004 and 2022. Estimated emissions associated with this change are about 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 e) during 2004-2022 or an annual average of 1.1 billion tons. Results also indicate that a significant portion of the emissions (about 11%) can be reduced if consumer preferences could be altered. In practice, this will require policy interventions that promote substitution of non-ruminant for ruminant meat products. Keywords Livestock Demand, Land Use, GHG Emissions, CGE Model * Corresponding author. S. P. Dhoubhadel et al. 986The global demand for livestock products has grown over the years and is likely continue that growth in the future [4]. Increasing overall livestock output has implications for the environment. The sources of GHG emissions from the livestock sector can be segregated into two broad categories: 1) emissions that emanate from land use changes due to livestock production; typically when forest land is converted into pasture or cropland to accommodate increased livestock production, it results in increased GHG emissions due to land clearing and reduced long term carbon sequestration; 2) emissions which are attributed to non-land use change sources such as enteric fermentation, feed production and processing, manure handling, and processing and transportation of animal products.Unlike the emissions estimates for non-land use sources, which have been well documented in the literature [1] [2], the emissions induced by land use changes due to livestock production have not been adequately addressed and are a contentious issue [5]. While [3] and [6] estimate about 2.4 to 2.6 billion tons carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2 e) emissions per year as a result of land use change due to livestock production, these reports, however, do not provide a detailed explanation of the methods used to obtain these estimates. A FAO report authored by [2] estimates approximately 7.1 billion tons of CO 2 e emissions annually from the livestock sector and attribute about 0.65 billion tons CO 2 e per year (about 9.2% of the total emissions from the sector) to the land use changes. However, this estimate fails to account fully the emissions from land use change associated with livestock production at the global level as it mainly accounts for land use changes in Latin America due to soybean production in Brazil and Argentina and pasture expansion in Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, and Paraguay...

In 2003, the Nebraska Legislature enacted the Livestock Friendly County designation program to promote the livestock industry in the state. Forty-nine of the state’s 93 counties received the designation at staggered years. Our paper estimates the causal effect of the program on the state’s cattle industry using a fixed effect difference-in-difference model that accounts for self-selection and staggered designation. Results indicate that the program does not appear to have a statewide effect on livestock expansion, but it is effective in some crop reporting districts. We offer some hypotheses on why this may be the case and draw some policy implications.

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