Researchers find corn ILUC to be minimal

In Illinois, since 2007 corn ethanol production has doubled and there was also a sharp upturn in corn prices between 2008 and 2012. However, a newly released article in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics finds no evidence to support earlier concerns about large indirect land use change effect of corn ethanol causing expansion in cropland and reduction in grasslands and forests.

Three AAEA members from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Auburn University, analyze the effects of corn ethanol expansion on land-use in a recently published paper in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics ‘Effects of Ethanol Plant Proximity and Crop Prices on Land-Use Change in the United States.’

The study finds that the overall impact of corn ethanol production on increasing total crop acreage was very negligible. Despite producing almost 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol in 2014, total crop acreage in 2014 increased by less than 1% due to the change in ethanol production capacity as compared to 2008 and by about 0.5% due to a change in crop price over this period.