Advances in agriculture and biofuels production technology won’t be enough, however. Lynd said a host of factors must coalesce to bring about the changes that are now widely accepted as necessary. Vehicle efficiency (fuel economy), for example, will have to improve by a multiple of 2.5, as will biomass crop yields. Someday, he said, it might be possible to meet all of the world’s food and mobility needs using 10 percent less land than we use today.

Volume Requirements Versus Performance
Greene said the biofuels industry should not casually dismiss land-use-change and food-versus-fuel theories, as Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, did last week calling the recent criticism of ethanol by foreign officials “a big joke,” according to The New York Times. Rather, he said, it’s vital to acknowledge the role biofuels play—negligible or not—in land-use-related issues.

There are, however, many other factors at play, Greene said.

“If you step back a little bit, it’s easier to see the complexity of this issue,” he said, explaining that the world’s growing population, rising incomes, changing diets, and increased energy demand, as well as a growing demand for biofuels from food crops, are putting increased pressure on land and food prices. “All of these things are attributed to increased grain prices,” he said. “Increased grain prices are leading to higher prices for land. As grain goes up, so does land. We’ve already seen land prices go up substantially in the United States and that’s going to trickle throughout the rest of the world. It also puts more pressure on farmers to increase yield, and there are a variety of ways they can do that but driving the land harder is going to be among them. Higher land prices and higher pressure for increased yields are going to lead, in an unconstrained world, to increased clearing of land, more fertilizer and more tillage.”

Building on the assertions made by Tilman and Lynd, Greene said the key to making biofuels work is exploring paths to increase both food and biomass production while steering clear of land conversion drivers. “We can get more food and more biomass off of our land, fighting global hunger and global warming at the same time,” he asserted.

Farmers need an incentive to change, however, and the fastest, most effective way to provide that incentive is through public policy, Green said. “We need to avoid extremes, embrace change and pay for performance, he said. “We need to put dollars on the table for the things we want as a society.”

Referring to the corn ethanol industry’s vital function as a bridge to next-generation biofuels, Greene said, “We can’t expect an industry to accept change that victimizes or cannibalizes its current existence.”

On the other hand, it’s time to start making performance-based policy choices that favor low-carbon biofuels. “Feedstocks that use very little land or are outside of land-use competition should not be penalized,” he said. “Feedstocks that are grown on flat, black, prime arable land—those that cause the most land-use competition—should have the highest penalty.”

Greene said the new 36-billion-gallon renewable fuels standard moves the United States in the right direction with its land-use safeguards, aggressive production targets and bold greenhouse gas emissions reduction floors. However, the NRDC would eventually prefer to see a more fundamental low-carbon fuel standard with performance-based incentives that go beyond carbon to water and land-use-change sustainability checks.

“We need to move away from these simple, blunt volume requirements that just pay for more and more production, and start paying for performance,” he said. “We should also move away from technology picking. Let’s let the market and the innovation of industry and farmers figure out, through [low-carbon policy drivers], what we as a society need.”

Tom Bryan is editorial director of Biomass Magazine. Reach him at tbryan@bbibiofuels.com or (701) 738-4962.

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