ERS Charts of Note
Subscribe to our Charts of Note series, which highlights economic research and analysis on agriculture, food, the environment, and rural America. Each week, this series highlights charts of interest from current and past ERS research.
At the end of the year, users can look forward to our Editors’ Picks of the Best of Charts of Note.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Corn is the feedstock for 97 percent of the ethanol produced in the United States, so refineries are heavily concentrated in the Corn Belt. Ethanol must be shipped long distances, usually by rail, to reach the major fuel markets on the east and west coasts. Refineries also locate near markets for coproducts such as distillers' grains, which are sold as feed to the livestock industry. As new technologies enable the commercial production of ethanol and other biofuels from feedstocks such as prairie grasses, woody biomass, and urban wastes, refineries will likely be built in other parts of the country and production will be more geographically dispersed. This map is from the September 2010 issue of Amber Waves magazine.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Methane digester systems capture methane from lagoon or pit manure storage facilities and use it as a fuel to generate electricity or heat. In addition to providing a renewable source of energy, digesters can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide other environmental benefits. Methane digesters have not been widely adopted in the United States mainly because the costs of constructing and maintaining these systems have exceeded the value of the benefits provided to the operator. But policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could make such biogas recovery facilities profitable for many livestock producers. Without a carbon market (when the price is zero), no hog and few dairy operations find it profitable to adopt a digester. As the carbon price increases, more operations adopt digesters, lowering emissions. At a carbon price of $13, greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by 9.8 and 12.4 million tons (carbon dioxide equivalent) for the dairy and hog sectors, respectively. This amounts to reductions of 61-62 percent of manure-generated methane in these sectors. A doubling of the carbon price to $26 could cause manure-based methane emissions from dairy and hogs together to be reduced by 78 percent. This chart was originally published in Carbon Prices and the Adoption of Methane Digesters on Dairy and Hog Farms, EB-16, February 2011.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
USDA Agricultural Projections to 2020, released in February 2011, provides longrun projections for the farm sector for the next 10 years. These annual projections cover agricultural commodities, agricultural trade, and aggregate indicators of the sector, such as farm income and food prices. Use of U.S. corn for the production of ethanol is projected to continue rising, but less rapidly than the sharp pace over the past 5 years. Global economic growth underlies increases in U.S. corn exports. This chart was originally published in USDA Agricultural Projections to 2020, OCE-111, February 2011.