Concerns regarding water scarcity, food security, and land/soil degradation are increasing, and these issues are far from being independent of bioenergy production. The competing need for land and water resources in food and bioenergy production have been at the forefront of policy debates. In this study, we examined policy debates related to land, food and water use in sugarcane ethanol production, and the challenges to integrated land–water–energy-food policies. We analyzed large amounts of data obtained from governmental and business documents, Brazilian newspapers, and the bulletins of non-governmental organizations over the last ten years by combining an unsupervised probabilistic latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model with sentiment analysis. The results show that land, energy and water are managed in isolation by separate and disconnected institutional entities. Although the discourses of actors have evolved over time in response to certain events (e.g., expansion of sugarcane and water scarcity), the discussions and resultant public policies have failed to consider the interdependence among various sectors. To achieve sustainable resource use, sugarcane ethanol expansion should be considered by decision-makers and companies within a wider governance framework based on nexus dynamics; specifically, trade-offs in land and water use with sectors beyond bioenergy must be acknowledged.

关于缺水，粮食安全和土地/土壤退化的担忧日益增加，这些问题远非独立于生物能源生产的问题。粮食和生物能源生产中对土地和水资源的竞争需求一直是政策辩论的重中之重。在这项研究中，我们研究了与甘蔗乙醇生产中的土地，粮食和水的使用有关的政策辩论，以及对土地，水，能源，粮食一体化政策的挑战。通过将无监督的概率潜在狄利克雷分配（LDA）模型与情绪分析相结合，我们分析了过去十年中从政府和商业文档，巴西报纸以及非政府组织的公告中获得的大量数据。结果显示，能源和水是由独立的，相互独立的机构实体隔离管理的。尽管随着某些事件（例如，甘蔗的扩大和缺水），参与者的话语随着时间的流逝而发展，但是讨论和由此产生的公共政策未能考虑到各个部门之间的相互依存关系。为了实现资源的可持续利用，决策者和公司应在基于联系动态的更广泛的治理框架中考虑扩大甘蔗乙醇；特别是，必须承认在土地和水利用方面与生物能源以外的领域进行权衡。讨论和由此产生的公共政策未能考虑各个部门之间的相互依存关系。为了实现资源的可持续利用，决策者和公司应在基于联系动态的更广泛的治理框架中考虑扩大甘蔗乙醇；特别是，必须承认在土地和水利用方面与生物能源以外的领域进行权衡。讨论和由此产生的公共政策未能考虑各个部门之间的相互依存关系。为了实现资源的可持续利用，决策者和公司应在基于联系动态的更广泛的治理框架中考虑扩大甘蔗乙醇；特别是，必须承认在土地和水利用方面与生物能源以外的领域进行权衡。