Corn for food socially profitable, not biofuels, says new study

In Illinois, a study from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign published in Earth’s Future found a net “social and economic worth of food corn production” in the U.S. of $1,492 per hectare, compared with “a remarkable $10 per hectare loss for biofuel corn production”.  Lead researcher Professor Kumar wrote that “The critical zone is the permeable layer of the landscape near the surface that stretches from the top of the vegetation down to the groundwater…the human energy and resource input involved in agriculture production alters the composition of the critical zone, which we are able to convert into a social cost.”

The analysis developed a model to calculte what they saw as the economic and environmental impact of using the resources required for both food and fuel applications of corn.