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Research suggests cropland for corn ethanol OK for ecosystem

By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A study published last month suggests land converted for use as a corn crop for ethanol production may be less harmful to the atmosphere than others claim and may even be beneficial in the long run.

The study, titled Biofuels, Land Use Change, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Some Unexplored Variables, uses statistical analysis and scenarios to determine how long it takes before land converted to corn crops used for ethanol production begins to be better for the atmosphere rather than worse.

The study was published last month in the online Environmental Science and Technology journal, and was written by Bruce Dale and Seungdo Kim of Michigan State University and Hyungtae Kim of Phillips Academy Andover. It is a reaction to two studies published in Science magazine last year that claim cropland used for biofuel production increases greenhouse gas emissions through land use change (LUC).

Here, the authors explore what happens when both grasslands and forestland are converted to cropland. They explain the effects of corn-based ethanol production are sometimes analyzed through indirect LUC, which often means that someone judges the effects of LUC in the United States by what happens somewhere else in the world. (An indirect LUC analysis can also be done by examining LUCs in the U.S. only.)

The authors question why a land use change here should be held as the cause of land use change somewhere else in the world, where environmental and other policies are controlled by other governments. But they say the other studies do this through their indirect LUC analysis.

Also, the authors state that indirect LUC analysis lets animal feed producers off the hook for any responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. They state this type of analysis makes corn used for biofuel entirely responsible for “all of the hypothetical incremental world demand for corn without assigning any of the resulting environmental burdens to other uses of corn.”

This, the authors add, even though 70 percent of corn grown worldwide is used to feed animals.

“It does not seem intellectually justifiable to give animal feed uses of corn this privileged position on greenhouse gas releases relative to corn used for biofuels,” the paper states.

The authors attack the analysis done in the other studies on another count; namely, that it isn’t fair to assign all of the blame for greenhouse gas emissions that occur because of a land use change just because an agricultural expansion takes place.
The reason, they claim, is because such land use changes do not happen in isolation. Most of the time land use changes occur together and almost all of the time they are timber harvest, development such as road building or agricultural expansion.
“Thus it is arbitrary and unreasonable to assume that all land use change worldwide is driven primarily by agricultural expansion,” the authors state.

The authors “revisit” the effect that the “E85 fuel system” has on greenhouse gas emissions as affected by LUC. They focus on different tillage practices, which are important because they affect the amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) that remains in the soil. More SOC in the soil is good since that means there is less of it in the atmosphere. Thus, no-till practice is best in this regard.
The authors used 40 counties in nine corn-producing states as sites for their analysis, including all in Farm World’s coverage area, except Kentucky and Tennessee. In their “reference scenario,” farmers divert cornfields to ethanol production and then also convert forestland or grassland to corn production.

Thus, the authors state, theirs is also an indirect LUC analysis. This means it can be compared directly to the other studies. They can also use information gathered from those studies, which they do to determine the “carbon deficit” that is caused by a given LUC.
The authors found the E85 fuel system offers greenhouse gas benefits over a period of 100 years. Depending on the scenario, it can take varying amounts of time to “pay back” the environment for the LUC that occurs, after which the LUC turns into a net benefit for the environment.

They found in the case of grassland converted to corn for ethanol, it took 12 years to pay back the environment; for forestland, 31 years. The authors also point out that plow tillage practices extend these payback times and other variables affect the scenarios as well.

They conclude by returning to their opinion about the unfair
treatment the ethanol industry is receiving in this regard, and that state government agencies or independent organizations with international authority should allocate environmental burdens more fairly among all the industries that emit greenhouse gases.
This paper isn’t available free online, but anyone who’s interested in discussing it with the corresponding author may call him at 517-353-6777, and Dale’s e-mail address is bdale@egr.msu.edu

2/11/2009