Researchers challenge the CRP status quo to mitigate fossil fuels
Researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) found that transitioning land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to bioenergy agriculture can be advantageous for American landowners, the government, and the environment.
Land enrolled in the CRP cannot currently be used for bioenergy crop production, wherein high-yielding plants (like miscanthus and switchgrass) are harvested for conversion into marketable bioproducts that displace fossil fuel- and coal-based energy. Established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1985, the CRP incentivizes landowners to retire environmentally degraded cropland, exchanging agricultural productivity for native habitats and accepting annual government payments in return. The CABBI team takes an integrated approach to weighing the costs and benefits of swapping the CRP status quo—uncultivated acreage—for bioenergy, combining the Biofuel and Environmental Policy Analysis Model (BEPAM) with the biogeochemical model DayCent (Daily Time Step Version of the Century Model).
A key component of this study aggregates data from both models to formulate a greenhouse gas (GHG) life-cycle assessment, which calculates the total GHGs mitigated by the process as a whole—from the physical act of planting to the introduction of clean energy into the bioeconomy.
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