Further analysis of “A Common Sense Theory of Indirect Land Use Change”

The article “A common sense approach to indirect land use change” that ran last week in Biofuels Digest has prompted an unusually elevated amount of response. The most detailed have included an essay by Bill Ray of Ray & Associates and a statistical analysis of data from last week’s article by Catchlight Energy exec Dr. Ben Lavie.

Lavie writes: ‘Plot the cost of corn vs the land use change – this is an xy plot which will result in a single line forming if there is a correlation, which one can then use simple least squares analysis to determine the r2 of the correlation – if it is close to 1 you have positive correlation”

After examining the data set in detail, Lavie writes: “Here is the graph I did by plotting the acres in column b by the corn price in column F.  No correlation seen for this data set.  Obviously there are other factors besides price of corn which cause farmers to add land.  Could be the actual profit (which we don’t know), land price, loan interest, wars, consumer confidance, etc.  So I am not sure that this proves your point, but certainly doesn’t disprove it anyway.”

The Digest thanks Dr. Lavie for his analysis.

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