Switching to Perennial Energy Crops Under Uncertainty and Costly Reversibility

Switching to Perennial Energy Crops under Uncertainty and Costly Reversibility

We study a farmer’s decision to convert traditional crop land into growing dedicated energy crops, taking into account sunk conversion costs, uncertainties in traditional and energy crop returns, and learning. The optimal decision rules differ significantly from the expected net present value rule, which ignores learning, and from real option models that allow only one way conversions into ener...

Perennial Energy Crops: Growth and Management

Ecosystem-Service Tradeoffs Associated with Switching from Annual to Perennial Energy Crops in Riparian Zones of the US Midwest

Integration of energy crops into agricultural landscapes could promote sustainability if they are placed in ways that foster multiple ecosystem services and mitigate ecosystem disservices from existing crops. We conducted a modeling study to investigate how replacing annual energy crops with perennial energy crops along Wisconsin waterways could affect a variety of provisioning and regulating e...

Capacity switching options under rivalry and uncertainty

Perennial Crops for Bio-fuels and Conservation

Perennial woody crops have the potential to contribute significantly to the production of bio-fuels while simultaneously helping to provide a wide range of conservation benefits. Among these benefits are increased biological diversity in the landscape, conservation of soil and water resources, maintenance of forest ecosystem productivity and health, contribution to the global carbon cycle, and ...