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A system of equations representing corn supply, feed demand, export demand, food, alcohol and industrial (FAI) demand, and corn price is estimated by three-stage least squares. A price dependent reduced form equation is then formed to investigate the effect of ethanol production on the national average corn price. The elasticity of corn price with respect to ethanol production is then obtained. Results suggest that ethanol production has a positive impact on the national corn price and that the demand from FAI has a greater impact on the corn price than other demand categories.

Author(s):
Fortenbery, T. Randall

Events external to agriculture have set in motion the conditions for structural change in the marketing of corn in the U.S. These included a rapid increase in the price of crude oil from $40 per barrel to over $100 caused by hurricanes, geopolitical events, an increased global demand for energy from countries like China and India, and in December 2007, the U.S. raising the renewable fuel standards. The results of this research show that there could be significant changes in the historical utilization and marketing of corn in the U.S.

Author(s):
Conley, Dennis M.

When the lignocellulosic biofuels industry reaches maturity and many types of biomass sources become economically viable, management of multiple feedstock supplies – that vary in their yields, density (tons per unit area), harvest window, storage and seasonal costs, storage losses, transport distance to the production plant – will become increasingly important for the success of individual enterprises. The manager’s feedstock procurement problem is modeled as a multi-period sequence problem to account for dynamic management over time.

Author(s):
Kumarappan, Subbu

In this study we use data envelopment analysis to decompose the overall economic efficiency of a sample of ethanol plants into three subcomponents: technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and a new component we call marketing efficiency. The relative importance of these sources of efficiency is of particular interest given the recent history of bankruptcies, plant closings and ownership change in the industry. Results reveal that observed production units are very efficient from a technical point of view as suggested by a standard deviation of 1% in technical efficiency.

Author(s):
Sesmero, Juan P.

The purpose of this research was to determine whether indirect land use occurs and if so to what extent. Indirect land use is a change from non-cropland to cropland (e.g. deforestation) that may occur in response to increasing scarcity of cropland. As farmers worldwide respond to higher crop prices in order to maintain the global food supply and demand balance, pristine lands are cleared and converted to new cropland to replace the crops for feed and food that were diverted elsewhere to biofuels production.

Author(s):
Sobowale, Folakemi

In the corn ethanol industry, the ability of plants to obtain favorable prices through marketing decisions is considered important for their overall economic performance. Based on a panel of surveyed of ethanol plants we extend data envelopment analysis (DEA) to decompose the economic efficiency of plants into conventional sources (technical and allocative efficiency) and a new component we call marketing efficiency.

Author(s):
Sesmero, Juan S.

We assessed current water consumption during liquid fuel production, evaluating major steps of fuel lifecycle for five fuel pathways: bioethanol from corn, bioethanol from cellulosic feedstocks, gasoline from U.S. conventional crude obtained from onshore wells, gasoline from Saudi Arabian crude, and gasoline from Canadian oil sands.

Ethanol Industry Outlooks from past years are made available by the renewable Fuels Association. The reports include the latest trends,developments happening with regard to the ethanol industry.

Ethanol production doubled in a very short period of time in the U.S. due to a combination of natural disasters, political tensions, and much more demand globally from petroleum. Responses to this expansion will span many sectors of society and the economy. As the Midwest gears up to rapidly add new ethanol manufacturing plants, the existing regional economy must accommodate the changes.

Author(s):
David Swenson

The Federal Trade Commision performs a market concentration analysis of the ethanol production industry to determine whether there is sufficient competition among industry participants to avoid price-setting and other anticompetitive behaviour.The FTC must report its findings to Congress and to the
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. This link presents the FTC’s
concentration analysis of ethanol production up to year 2009.

This is an overview of transportation issues facing a rapidly expanding U.S. ethanol industry in the context of the U.S. corn market—currently the main source of ethanol production in the United States. The aim of the report is to present a frame of reference as the ethanol industry continues to grow and additional transportation benchmarks and indicators develop by providing analysis of transportation requirements for corn-based ethanol and its impact on grain transportation.

Many site specific factors have been identified to influence ethanol plant location and production. These include availability of corn, water, cattle and access to a major highway. The objective of this paper is to determine whether these factors actually have influence on plant size. The rapid expansion of the industry could make these factors crucial in its survival. The study involved 122 ethanol plants in similar number of US counties.

Author(s):
Frank Tenkorang

A key objective of U.S. energy policy is to increase biofuel use by highway vehicles to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022. The Energy Independence and Security Act envisions that nearly all of this target will be met by gasohol (E10) or neat ethanol (E85). Since the market for blending ethanol with gasoline at 10% by volume will saturate at about 15 billion gallons, most of the ethanol will need to be sold in the form of E85 unless higher order blends are approved by automakers and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Author(s):
David L. Greene

One fundamental issue influencing the economic viability of the ethanol industry is consumers' demand responsiveness to both gasoline and ethanol price changes. This paper presents an alternative approach by estimating the geographic variation of price elasticity of demand for ethanol across the study area.

Author(s):
Hayk Khachatryan

Transgenic modification of plants is a key enabling technology for developing sustainable biofeedstocks for biofuels production. Regulatory decisions and the wider acceptance and development of transgenic biofeedstock crops are considered from the context of science-based risk assessment. The risk assessment paradigm for transgenic biofeedstock crops is fundamentally no different from that of current generation transgenic crops, except that the focus of the assessment must consider the unique attributes of a given biofeedstock crop and its environmental release.

Author(s):
Wolt, Jeffrey D.