26 Aug 2011This probably doesn’t surprise you, but growth in ethanol production since the year 2000 contributed to dramatic shifts in U.S. agricultural production, according to a new report from USDA’s Economic Research Service.
The report, titled “The ethanol decade: An expansion of U.S. corn production, 2000 - 2009,” notes that as annual U.S. ethanol production increased 9 billion gallons between 2000 and 2009, so did demand for corn. Over that time, U.S. corn acreage increased by about 10 percent, or 7.2 million acres. Much of the increase occurred between 2006 and 2008.
The report’s authors note that while the report examines the expansion in U.S. corn production between 2000 and 2009, it focuses specifically on farm-level evidence for 2006 to 2008, when dramatically higher corn prices relative to other crops caused stimulated increased corn production
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/decade_ethanol
