New biofuel feedstocks will be driven by effeciency and economics.

Implications: The adoption of new crops for biofeedstocks will be driven by how efficient the crops are (gallons per acre), and in how they fare economically (net returns per acre).  Crops like camelina may be able to gain a foothold in regions where corn and soy are less viable, like the US west and northwest.  Crops like Jatropha may gain a foothold in some regions of the world, likely in lower cost labor regions (at least initially), due to the high labor requirements.  Jatropha, however, needs to develop better genetics, and a mechanized planting and harvest systems for it to be a significant source of biofuel.  The perfection of cellulosic biofuels, however, will likely make all of these crops unneeded for fuel production, due to its higher efficiency, so all these crops probably have a limited window of opportunity to feed biofuels production.

Analysis: Producers of corn and soybeans in the US have spent a great deal of time and money over the past decade trying to develop new markets for their commodities, and with biofuels, they have finally achieved some very significant successes, and as a result, prices for corn and soy are at all time highs.  However an old axiom in the commodity markets is that the best cure for high prices, are high prices (also works well on the flip side--low prices curing low prices), and we can see that axiom being played out now in the search for other "bio-feed-stocks" to replace these now-to-expensive commodities

This article talks about a couple of these potential replacements for corn and soy, the primary one mentioned being camelina....which is a relative to rapeseed, which is already used for biofuel production.  The choice of crops to use for biofuels really comes down to two things: efficiency and economics.

Although corn and soy are currently the best the US has to offer in the area of efficiency, in the long-run, the US doesn't have sufficient arable acreage to use these crops to supply the volumes of fuel needed to replace petroleum based fuels and still supply the current customers...the livestock producers of the world....hence the current high prices for these commodities. 

What a crop like camelina does is to create a viable option to produce a biofuel feedstock in growing regions not well suited to corn or soy.  While the crop could also be grown in areas well suited to corn and soy, ie: the US Midwest, it then comes down to the economics of production to determine what gets grown where.  The economics are tied to how much each crop yields, costs to grow, and can be sold for.  In addition, the mechanization required for production plays into the equation..ie: what new equipment is required, if any, to produce a new crop.

Plants like Jatropha, also mentioned in this article, hold out a lot of potential as a biodiesel feedstock, but the challenge for this plant lie in the fact that it basically is undomesticated, meaning the genetics have not been refined enough yet to allow for consistent production.  This explains, in part, the dramatic variability in yield estimates that are being reported for this plant around the world.  The other Achilles heal for Jatropha is in the fact that it currently requires a great deal of manual labor to produce, although there is reported to be some work underway in parts of Brazil on a mechanized harvester.

In the longrun, new feedstocks for biodiesel and ethanol will undoubtedly emerge to compete with corn, soy and sugarcane, and the winners will be the most efficient crops that provide the best returns-per-acre to the producers.  The magic bullet however, is cellulosic, and corn, soy, camelina, and even jatropha, would all likely be eclipsed by the economics and efficiency of cellulosic biofuels production, if and when that becomes a reality.