By Cole Lauterbach/Illinois Radio Network
URBANA-CHAMPAIGN – In the first study of its kind, Illinois researchers compared the cost of the entire life cycle of corn used as food to corn used as biofuel and found that it has more economic value as food.
Praveen Kumar, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign civil and environmental engineering professor, and graduate student Meredith Richardson led the research.
“The reason we undertook this study was to understand what are the long-term impacts and benefits in agricultural land,” Kumar said.
The study, started three years ago, sought to put a dollar amount to each step in corn production and processing for food and biofuel use. The team assigned a monetary value to the economic and environmental impact of every resource used, including the soil.
Kumar said this study was unique because it considered the soil, the environment, social cost for producing biofuel, benefits and more as an integral part and put a dollar amount to those factors.
Richardson noted that environmental soil impacts from soil nutrient fluxes in the growing process accounted for 80 percent of the environmental impact, which was more than previously thought.
The researchers determined that in Illinois, corn used for food — typically for livestock — had a total net gain of $1,492 per hectare, while corn used for biofuel had a net loss of about $942 per hectare. A hectare equals nearly 2.5 acres.
“What this study does is basically contrast the values of the use of corn for food versus bio-energy and what are the net benefits being derived from that,” Kumar said. “So this kind of analysis opens up a new way of assessing how we value our product.”
Kumar emphasized that the study is not a judgment or commentary on the positives or negatives of biofuel but rather a way to assess a dollar amount to different uses of corn.
“It is more in terms of how that ethanol is valued in terms of both environmental cost and direct benefits profits to the ethanol companies, and how we as a society basically should put value on these things,” Kumar said.
In 2016, Illinois farmers planted 11.6 million acres of corn, which accounts for more than half of the $19 billion brought in annually by Illinois’ agricultural commodities.
