Land use is a major stressor influencing agroecosystems. Limited land is available globally to grow food, feed and fuel and there are direct and indirect pressures on forests and other lands to be converted. There is a future for a sustainable biofuels industry but that feedstock production must avoid agricultural land that would otherwise be used for food production. Advanced technologies have significant potential, but may only produce biofuels with higher greenhouse gas (GHG) savings if feedstock production avoids use of existing agricultural land that leads to indirect land-use change. Mechanisms do not yet exist to accurately measure, or to avoid, the effects of indirect land-use change from biofuels. Current lifecycle analyses of GHG-effects fail to take account of indirect land-use change and avoided land use from co-products. Consequently, the net GHG emissions from current biofuel targets cannot be assessed with certainty, and there is a risk that any biofuel target could lead to a net increase in GHG emissions. GHG-based targets may result in a greater land requirement, and land-use change, than a volume or energy-based target; and second generation biofuels using feedstock grown on existing agricultural land may cause greater net land-use change than first generation biofuels that also produce co-products that avoid land use. However, support of carbon taxes and broad-based oil taxes is currently limited.
