Bradford L. Barham

1 INTRODUCTION Many economic models of agricultural decision-making widely and rightfully employ profit maximization as the key behavioral objective. A useful example is allocating land to competing crops using the equimarginal returns principle (Debertin, 2012, ch. 16). Recent research, however, expands the scope of analysis to include nonpecuniary benefits (Pannell & Zilberman, 2020).

Cellulosic crops are projected to provide a large fraction of transportation energy needs by mid-century. However, the anticipated land requirements are substantial, which creates a potential for environmental harm if trade-offs are not sufficiently well understood to create appropriately prescriptive policy.