Quantifying the land-use change due to soybean-based biodiesel in the United States

We quantify the impact of soybean oil-based biodiesel production on US cropland, using a method that accounts for the intermediate effect of soybean crushing facilities. Based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data for biodiesel production and proprietary data for soybean crushing facilities over 2011-2020, we find that the elasticities of soybean acreage and total cropland acreage with respect to soybean oil-based biodiesel production are 0.011 and 0.002, respectively. The direct land-use effect of soybean oil-based biodiesel is about 0.96 million acres of cropland expansion per billion gallons, about twice as high as some estimates for corn ethanol from previous studies.