The report comes as the industry awaits a rule from the Environmental Protection Agency on greenhouse gas rules under the RFS.

According to the report, Understanding Land Use Change and US Ethanol Expansion, gains in agricultural productivity, coupled with the contribution of feed produced as an ethanol co-product, are expected to significantly mitigate the need for conversion of non-agricultural lands to support expanded US biofuels production.

"Using unsupported assumptions, imprecise economic models, and questionable logic, some have suggested growth in US biofuels like ethanol would indirectly cause significant conversion of forest and grassland to agriculture in the United States and abroad," said the report.

Moreover, there is no empirical evidence demonstrating land conversion abroad is a result of US biofuels production.

"Unfortunately, the current state of land use change science is far from conclusive and no consensus exists on how best to analyse the potential indirect land use impacts of expanding biofuels production," continued the report.

In addition to examining projections from Informa Economics on future global agriculture land use, the RFA report cites studies and findings by the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the US Department of Agriculture and other researchers and research organisations.

The report analyses historical cropland and crop utilisation trends, explores the complex and multi-faceted nature of land use changes, and discusses the uncertainty of current land use change modeling approaches.