Local and Regional Economic Impacts of Biofuel Development
Expanded processing of agricultural products in rural areas has been widely pursued as a strategy for rural economic development. By adding value to farm products before they leave the area, new processing plants can create new employment opportunities and generate economic spinoffs in rural areas that have experienced economic stagnation or decline as a result of long term trends of farm consolidation. In addition, farmer owned processing facilities provide a way for producers to integrate forward and capture potential profits from processing and marketing their products. Consequently, the expansion of agricultural processing in rural areas usually receives broad-based support from commodity groups, rural development interests, and state political leaders. In recent years, the most prevalent type of new agricultural processing ventures in the Midwest and Great Plains states has been corn ethanol plants. Like other types of agricultural processing, these biofuel ventures have generally received widespread support, and numerous studies have addressed their contributions to local or regional economies. However, while the methods employed have seemingly been quite similar, the findings have varied widely with the impacts attributed to ethanol development differing as much as ten-fold. The purpose of this paper is to (1) examine reasons why estimates of local or regional economic impacts of biofuel development may vary and (2) compare the economic impacts of corn-based ethanol production with those expected to be associated with cellulosic ethanol production.
Are Biofuels Revitalizing Rural Economies? Projected Versus Actual Labor Market Impacts in the Great Plains
Rising fuel prices and government policy have caused a sharp increase in demand for biofuels in the United States. To meet this increased demand, biofuel plants are being built throughout the grain belt. Due to their reliance on farm products for inputs, nearly all biofuel plants are situated in rural communities proximate to grain supplies. As the biofuel industry continues to grow and plants are built throughout the grain belt economists have become increasingly interested in the impacts these new plants have on rural communities. Changes in the labor market are of special importance in evaluating rural development. A primary obstacle for most rural communities is the lack of job opportunities outside the farm sector, where labor requirements continue to diminish. A tool commonly used by many economists to predict the labor impact of new biofuel plants is Input-output (I-O) analysis. Given estimates of direct economic impacts (the original economic shock), software such as Impact Analysis for Planning (IMPLAN) estimates endogenous linkages between production, labor and capital income, trade, and household expenditures providing estimated effects on sector output, value added, household income, and employment (MIG, 1999). The process captures not only the
World Drug Report 2000
Thank you for downloading world drug report 2000. As you may know, people have look numerous times for their chosen books like this world drug report 2000, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they cope with some malicious bugs inside their laptop. world drug report 2000 is available in our book collection an online access to it is set as public so you can download it instantly. Our book servers saves in multiple locations, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Kindly say, the world drug report 2000 is universally compatible with any devices to read.