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

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.

Biomass Production with Conservation Practices for Two Iowa Watersheds

“…Several studies report applications of SWAT for the entire RRW (Jha et al 2007; Jha et al 2010; Teshager et al 2016; Teshager et al 2017) but not for the HRRW subwatershed. The analysis included planting switchgrass on marginal lands, using a profitability indicator approach developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that differs from the way that marginal or vulnerable land was accounted for in some previous studies (Valcu‐Lisman et al 2016; Gassman et al 2017; Panagopoulos et al 2017; Guo et al 2018). The unique contribution of this work is as follows: (1) it presents a way to evaluate conservation practices incorporated into a landscape design in a modeling framework that contains the ACPF Toolbox, SWAT model, and decades of field monitoring data, and (2) it evaluates the water quality effects of landscape design scenarios that incorporate biomass into marginal or low productivity landscapes.…”

Special Issue on Economics of Water Quality: Challenges, Policies, and Behavioral Mechanisms

“…Biofuels can potentially contribute to reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and dependence on foreign oil but also involve tradeoffs with water quality degradation from nutrient loading. Adriana Valcu-Lisman, Catherine Kling, and Philip Gassman (2016) explore the tradeoffs associated with alternative land-use regimes and changes in water quality and habitat. They find that using switchgrass or miscanthus instead of soybeans or corn results in better water quality because those crops reduce soil erosion and nutrient uptake.…”

Analysis of Feasibility and factors Affecting Production of Sweet Potato Farming On Coastal Land in Gadingsari Village, Sanden, Bantul

“…Coastal sand land is marginal land, which is land that has nutrient limitation characteristics. Marginal land refers to land that has low productivity in producing an agricultural product [1]. The beach sand field has high wind speed and brings sand material and chemicals from the seas that are not good for plants.…”