The U.S. biofuels industry would be hamstrung if government regulators choose to use unfair and untested formulas that hold it responsible for greenhouse gases from crops overseas, ethanol groups said on Thursday.

Farmers will have three weeks to apply for $50 million in land stewardship funding to help pay the cost of converting to organic production, said the U.S. Agriculture Department on Tuesday.

The U.S. government will make its first in-depth survey of organic farming this spring, an eight-page questionnaire on which crops and livestock are produced, how they are grown and where they are sold.

The Conservation Reserve, which pays owners to idle fragile U.S. farmland, could become one of the largest carbon sequestration programs on private land, an Agriculture Department official said on Wednesday.