The danger of hidden variables

So last week I traveled briefly to Johnson City, Kansas, population approximately 2,500. The place is the flattest I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to the Netherlands so that is saying quite a lot. Unsurprisingly one thing they do very well over there is farming. I was given an in-depth tour of a small dairy farm (roughly 2500 cows) by the owner. The man has over 25 years of farming experience and owns vast parcels where he grows anything from wheat and corn to onions.

In any case, we were going around his dairy farm and the topic of biofuels came up. I’ve read in a number of places that the production of biofuel from corn and other animal feed is somewhat backwards given that calculations demonstrate that more energy is required to produce the fuel in the first place. Well this man, and I am of the opinion that he knows what he is talking about, explained that the production of biofuel from feed grains involves separating the starch from the oil and protein in the grain. The starch is used to produce the fuel, but he still uses the oil and protein to feed his cows. This last fact is quite important but according to him it is conveniently ignored in the aforementioned calculations. It’s important because the energy fed to the cows in the form of grain oil and protein is not included.

Granted, I can appreciate that this man may have a biased point of view, but then again he is the one in Kansas dealing with this on a day to day basis so he probably knows more about the subject than I do. The big lesson for me was that one must always take a step back and make sure all the variables are accounted for when dealing with these types of comparisons. Honestly, I thought I already knew this – astonishing those moments of rediscovery, no?




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