Land Use Study’s Comic-Strip Logic

In one of the comic strips in today’s newspaper (“Baby Blues,” 3/16/10), a boy is writing a paper for school in which he talks about John Philip Sousa, the famous composer, who — he writes — was also a ninja. He tells his shocked mom, “Facts are more interesting when you make them up.”

We’re seeing the same thing today about attempts to tie increased corn production for ethanol in the United States to indirect land use change on a global level. In an era that worships the shocking headline, truth often falls victim.

Take the newest study on corn production and international indirect land use, which has made a few headlines this week. It’s a rehash of old data that was provided to the California Air Resources Board and that was funded by oil interests – companies that have a financial stake in the decision that was reached. The Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley, one of the funders, is supported with a 10-year $500 million grant from BP, formerly known as British Petroleum.

But not only is the data old, but the data on which it was based is old. It bases itself on the corn yield back in 2001 and an estimate of ethanol production efficiency that is also outdated. Further, it’s based on an analytical model, GTAP, that is deeply flawed and is incapable of capturing the dynamism of global agricultural markets, such as yield growth and changes in how distillers grains are used. Because of its many shortcomings, EPA opted not to use this model for its recent Renewable Fuel Standard modeling.