Posted on: July 09, 2010 in Brazil, Ethanol, Land Use, Research

The advent of “social media” has forever changed the way our society discusses and debates important political and social issues. Points and counterpoints whiz through cyberspace at the speed of light and anyone with a computer (or iPhone or Blackberry, for that matter) has the power to shape public opinion at his or her fingertips.

Blogs have been particularly popular in serving as forums for lively debate over timely political issues and current events. Blogs allow anyone with an opinion on anything to transmit virtual editorials to the masses in an instant. And the true beauty of blogs is that readers are afforded the opportunity to respond immediately to the original post with their own views and opinions. Well…most of the time anyway. Unfortunately, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association’s (UNICA) new Sweeter Alternative “blog” doesn’t afford its readers such an opportunity. In fact, it isn’t really a blog at all. It’s a wolf in blog’s clothing. Sure, it has the look of a blog, but it certainly doesn’t have the feel of one. Readers don’t have any opportunity to express their views or respond to the slanted opinions served up by UNICA. The site isn’t interactive and there’s nothing “social” about it.

Every week or so, Joel Velasco of UNICA posts a new entry to the non-blog. As you can imagine, the “posts” typically sing the praises of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol and disparage the U.S. renewable fuels policies that have been so successful in building a robust and vibrant domestic biofuels industry. Without fail, the posts try to convince readers that the United States should eliminate the tariff on imported ethanol and roll out the red carpet for more Brazilian product (the tariff, of course, was put in place to offset the tax credit that gasoline blenders claim for each gallon of ethanol they use).

It probably goes without saying that we often disagree with the posts on UNICA’s non-blog. Just about every new post on the site has at least one misleading statement about the U.S. ethanol industry and/or U.S. energy policy that we’d like to dispute. Unfortunately, we haven’t had the chance to set the record straight. Since there’s no opportunity for the public to comment on UNICA’s web site, readers are intentionally deprived of exposure to opposing viewpoints and open debate. We’ve asked Joel on a few occasions to correct misinformation on the site and publish unsanitized responses from us to his most egregious claims (after all, “honesty” and being “fair and balanced” are among the web site’s “guiding principles,” according to Joel’s first post). Our requests to submit responses have twice been denied, and there remains today no vehicle for the public to offer their thoughts and comments.

The latest incident occurred June 28 when a post was added to the site accusing RFA of “cherry-picking” data for a recent presentation (see slide 10) to the House Ag Committee that shows Brazil’s increased ethanol output over the past decade has come primarily through expansion of the land area dedicated to growing sugarcane. (This is an important point because EPA’s land use change analysis for the RFS2 suggests U.S. corn ethanol is somehow responsible for 22 times more land use change emissions occurring in Brazil than Brazilian sugarcane itself! See Figure 2.4-41 of the RFS2 RIA). Joel derided the presentation as “an intentionally dishonest portrayal” of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol. He went on to try to refute the information that we presented. He was rather unconvincing in doing so, I might add (indeed, how can you argue that sugarcane harvested area hasn’t expanded dramatically when your own chart shows a four-fold increase since 1975!?).

Since we aren’t able to address the “cherry-picking” allegations on UNICA’s non-blog, we’ll do so here.

First, UNICA alleged that we somehow misrepresented the yield of total recoverable sugars (TRS) per hectare and pretended those yields “don’t matter.” Quite the contrary; we do fully understand that both the physical yield and the yield of recoverable sugars are important when discussing the productivity of sugarcane. Our analysis did in fact account for both. Our data on TRS yields came directly from USDA’s Brazilian attaché, which regularly publishes assessments (called GAIN reports) of commodity and trade issues. See for yourself:

To figure TRS yield per hectare, we also need to know the physical sugarcane yield per hectare. We got data for physical harvested sugarcane yields from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which is a widely cited and publicly available government source (Joel chastises our use of the IBGE data, despite the fact that it is the only publicly available data set and is regularly referenced by USDA and others). Then it’s simply a matter of multiplying physical yield per hectare by TRS yield per metric ton. It’s not rocket science. What the data shows is that while physical cane yields have risen slightly over the past decade, TRS yields have not. The net effect is that TRS yields per hectare haven’t grown much at all in the last 10 years (and have actually receded in recent years). Again, TRS per hectare is the amount of sugar produced per hectare that is actually available for conversion to ethanol (or other purposes).

So, if net sugar yields per hectare aren’t really increasing, there’s only one other way to enlarge sugar supplies for increased ethanol production—expand sugarcane acreage. And that’s exactly what’s happened in Brazil. IBGE data shows a doubling in sugarcane area since 1999 and UNICA’s own chart shows a quadrupling since the mid-1970s.

Next, Joel’s post accuses us of somehow doing an apples-to-oranges comparison of corn yields and sugarcane yields because sugarcane is a “semi-perennial crop that takes about a year to reach maturity and is then harvested for 5-7 years without needing to be replanted.” What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China? I fail to see what the growing cycle has to do with our point that annual TRS yields are flat or falling and physical yields are increasing only marginally. Sugarcane plantings are staggered such that sugarcane is harvested annually. As such, annual data is published by government agencies on physical yields and TRS yields—we simply presented their data.

Joel says we included non-harvested cane in our calculation of TRS yield per hectare. Rest assured, we did not. The IBGE sugarcane yield data is for harvested sugarcane only. I’m not even sure how or why one would estimate the yield of unharvested sugarcane.

The post also scolds us for purportedly not recognizing that sugarcane has uses other than producing ethanol. Joel says we shouldn’t have included sugarcane that isn’t used for ethanol in our yield calculations (at least I think that’s what he’s saying). This argument just doesn’t stand up. Average yields are average yields—it doesn’t matter what the sugarcane is being used for. The end use doesn’t change the cane yield or the TRS yield of the sugar. Talk about obfuscating the facts.

The bottom line here is that sugarcane area is expanding and the yield of recoverable sugars per hectare isn’t increasing much (if at all). Yet, somehow Brazilian sugarcane ethanol has largely escaped being penalized for predicted land use changes in EPA’s analysis (U.S. corn ethanol was saddled with a penalty of 32 kgCO2e/mmBTU in net international land use change emissions, while Brazilian sugarcane ethanol was assessed a penalty of just 4 kgCO2e/mmBTU).

In closing his post, Joel urges RFA to “shoot straight.” Make no mistake. We shoot straight and our aim is true (literally and figuratively: we have two former U.S. Army expert marksmen on staff, including myself). We would have been more than happy to sit down with Joel or anyone else to walk through our analysis. Alternatively, we would have been happy just to defend ourselves and our work on UNICA’s non-blog. If UNICA wants to have the open and transparent debate that its “ground rules” aspire to, they should allow us to comment in real time when they post something new. If they’re not willing to do that, then they should stop calling Sweeter Alternative a “blog.”

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