Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Little, Randall

Committee Member

Petrolia, Daniel

Committee Member

Coble, Keith

Date of Degree

12-10-2010

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Agriculture

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Department

Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract

This study examines the feasibility of producing sweet sorghum as an ethanol feedstock in Mississippi. An enterprise budgeting system is used along with estimates of transportation costs to estimate farmers’ breakeven costs for producing and delivering sweet sorghum biomass. This breakeven cost for the farmer, along with breakeven costs for the producer based on wholesale ethanol price, production costs, and transportation and marketing costs for the refined ethanol, is used to estimate the amounts that farmers and ethanol producers would be willing to accept (WTA) and willing to pay (WTP), respectively, for sweet sorghum biomass. These WTA and WTP estimates are analyzed by varying key factors in the biomass and ethanol production processes. Deterministic and stochastic models are used to estimate profits for sweet sorghum and competing crops in two representative counties in Mississippi, with sweet sorghum consistently yielding negative per-acre profits in both counties.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/15565

Comments

simulation||sweet sorghum||biofuel||Ethanol

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