Doing the Right Thing Difficult in Today’s Political Climate

A recent online New York Times editorial praised the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision supporting the expansion of biofuels production however, the praise was too lavish, according to many close to the issue.

As seems to be more and more common in government, EPA’s attempts to mollify all parties involved, resulted in a watered-down decision that missed the mark. The source of the EPA and NY Times gaff is their inability to expose the Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) argument for the red herring it really represents.

For those unfamiliar with the concept a “red herring” is a deliberate attempt to divert or deflects attention away from the real subject at hand, and ILUC proponents deserve a nod for their adept sleight of hand regarding the future of biofuels. Instead of focusing on the documented economic, environmental, and energy contributions of biofuels, we find ourselves debating the tenuous connection between America’s production of corn and land use impacts in sovereign countries elsewhere in the world.

According to the Renewable Fuels Association, these so-called indirect land use impacts have questionable scientific validity. In fact, more than 100 scientists and Ph.D.’s have stated: “The ability to predict this alleged effect depends on using an economic model to predict worldwide carbon effects, and the outcomes are unusually sensitive to the assumptions made by the researchers conducting the model runs. In addition, this field of science is in its nascent stage, is controversial in much of the scientific community, and is only being enforced against biofuels.”

That’s RFA’s way of saying a lot reasonable and reputable folks don’t trust the subjective nature of computer modeling which is in its infancy, let alone using something as important as biofuels as the crash-test dummy for this new assumption rather than fact-based driven methodology.

Darrin Ihnen, president of the National Corn Growers Association, laid bare the biggest argument refuting ILUC in his response to the New York Times. “Upwardly trending corn yields disprove this theory. In 2009, for example, farmers grew enough corn to break 2007’s production record, and we did so harvesting nearly seven million fewer acres.”

In fact, corn growers have developed a new paradigm regarding the future of corn production. Scientists have unlocked the intricate corn genome and in doing so have set the stage for a national yield average of nearly 300 bushels per acre within two decades. Productive capacity is increasing so rapidly that the U.S. corn farmers has grown enough corn to meet the needs of all markets while biofuel production has soared.

Ihnen pointedly says “those who wrote the studies you cite should get out into the fields and talk to the many farmers who are not only beating the Department of Agriculture’s average corn yield, but also doubling it in some circumstances. They will see the great potential the Corn Belt has for feeding and fueling the world.”