25 Million Acres of Corn with nowhere to go?
25 Million Acres of Corn with nowhere to go?
Changes in bioenergy mix, corn productivity point to massive oversupply of acreage by 2030.
Buried inside the USDA’s Biofuels Strategic Production Report is a startling prediction from both EPA and USDA: if the Renewable Fuel Standard targets are to be met by 2022, there will be a wholesale change in the US crop mix. However, doomsayers who have been predicting an inevitable conflict between food and fuel appear to have been completely off the mark.
Rather than a shortage of food, the increased pace of biotechnology innovation associated with bioenergy is set to usher in a period of food abundance so intense that US food policy may have to move back towards crop subsidies, because there will be far more food available than the world will know what to do with.
In short, there’s the possibility of a 25 million acre above-ground, living carbon reserve – enough to retire a massive section of lost US prairie – or opportunities for a renaissance in US exports through byproducts. Policymakers will have to craft a long-term vision sooner rather than later, and environmental groups that want a restored US prairie might want to “seize the day” and get behind the potentials that increased productivity can bring.