Properly assessing land use for biofuels

Rapeseed

According to investigations conducted by Agrarmarkt-Informations-Gesellschaft (mbH), the total world area planted with cereals, oilseeds and protein, sugar and fiber crops as well as fruit, vegetables and nuts amounted to approximately 1.2 billion hectares in 2022.

The largest share was used directly or indirectly, via livestock feeds, for human nutrition.

Only around 6 percent of the area was used to produce biofuels.

At the same time, biofuel production is in most cases very obviously located in places where there is a surplus of feedstock anyway (mainly corn, palm oil and soybean oil).

If the option of using the surplus to produce biofuels did not exist, it would have to be placed on the global market, where it would weigh heavily on feedstock costs.

The conversion of agricultural feedstock to biofuels reduces the production overhang, generates extra value added and reduces the need for foreign currency for imports of crude oil or fossil fuels. The latter is primarily a problem in poorer countries.

Another advantage of biofuel production is that it also yields high-quality protein feedstuffs, which are in high demand.

The share and quality of these protein feeds have a strong influence on commodity prices and consequently on the size of the area planted. This applies especially to soybeans.

Biofuels are by no means the price drivers in the commodities markets. In an emergency situation, the feedstocks required in biofuel production will be available for food supply (for example, rapeseed/sunflower-seed oil during the Ukraine crisis).

If arable farming were to be extensified for political reasons—an aim the European Commission is pursuing with the reduction strategy for fertilizers and plant-protection products under the Green Deal—this option of  “buffering” food demand would no longer be available.

The Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen e.V. (UFOP) has pointed out that high-quality protein is obtained as a byproduct of biofuel production and used for livestock-feeding purposes or directly in the human diet.

This aspect is not given sufficient consideration in the debate about global changes in land use.

According to the UFOP, the percentage of area used for rapeseed-based protein production should be subtracted and accounted for in the calculation of land required for biofuel production—a figure frequently referred to.

The association has therefore urged that this supply-and-buffer effect in terms of land pressure in third countries should also be taken into account in the assessment of the crop-biomass potential as part of Germany’s National Biomass Strategy (NABIS).

With rapeseed having a share of 60 percent feed protein, only 40 percent of the crop area should be allocated to the production of biofuels, UFOP has argued.

From UFOP’s perspective, this would be a fair and proper approach because missing protein volumes would have to be made up for by imports that would require additional land use.