Finding Balance

This briefing by the World Resources Institute analyzes the environmental impacts of harvesting corn stover for cellulosic ethanol production in the United States, highlighting risks to soil carbon, nutrient pollution, and erosion, while evaluating the effectiveness of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) to mitigate these effects.

• Harvesting corn stover, even at moderate levels, leads to increased soil erosion and the depletion of soil carbon on agricultural lands. This process, combined with increased fertilizer application, results in higher nutrient losses that contribute to water quality issues, specifically the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Agricultural best management practices (BMPs) offer varying levels of protection against the impacts of residue removal: reduced tillage helps prevent soil loss from erosion but is not very effective at stopping soil carbon depletion, while winter cover crops (WCC) can replace harvested residues for soil enrichment and capture nutrients, though they are not widely adopted by farmers.
• The document recommends that federal and state biofuel support policies, such as the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit and the Renewable Fuels Standard, mandate environmental performance requirements to ensure BMP adoption. It further calls for increased USDA and USDOE funding for research into the long-term sustainability of biomass and the obstacles to adopting conservation tillage and cover crops.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Finding Balance. https://www.wri.org/research/finding-balance

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Finding Balance. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/finding-balance.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Finding Balance |url=https://www.wri.org/research/finding-balance |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendfinding, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Finding Balance}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/finding-balance}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }