Key Uncertainties Affecting Land Use Change From Expansion of Biofuels.

Volatile energy markets, growing concern over U.S. dependency on oil imports, and environmental questions involving emissions from fossil-based fuels, have all contributed to heightened interest in biofuels in recent years. How and where biofuel feedstock crops will be grown will influence - and be influenced by - the economics of the agriculture sector. Land management and land use change, both direct and indirect, will in turn influence environmental outcomes. Direct land use change is the land used to produce the biofuel feedstock in excess of the land used in the absence of a biofuel policy. Indirect land use change represents the increases in land planted to other crops and conversion of pasture and forests that are induced by the biofuel policy. Modeling the land use change induced by an agricultural policy requires making projections about future values of parameters that cannot be known with certainty. Therefore, judgments and assumptions must be made as to the likely values these uncertain data will take. The bottom line of an integrated agriculture sector and GHG lifecycle model is, to a greater or lesser degree, sensitive to the values chosen and to the underlying structure of the model. This talk will explore some of the key uncertainties, and the outlook for reducing their impact on model outcomes.