Abstract
Some papers have questioned the benefits of biofuels, claiming that biofuels cause food prices to increase and more land to be diverted to crop production. We analyzed the consumer food price index from 1973 to 2016. It was found that US food price inflation rate was 2.6% from 1991 to 2015 with an R2 of 1.0, fully encompassing the biofuel boom. It was concluded that biofuel had no significant impact on food price index. Agricultural Census data shows that crop land in the United States decreased by 88 million acres from 1950 to 2012. A part of our research was manual analysis of the land use classification in the US. Net 8.66% of non-agricultural lands were classified as agriculture land. Comparing 2011 and 2015 land classification, the automated classification showed 8.53% increase in agricultural land, while manual classification showed only 0.31% (±1.92%) increase.