The Blunder Crop: a Biofuels Digest special report on jatropha biofuels development (part II)
Overall, the company appears to be bearing down into the realities of the business, but the numbers do not suggest robust yields are in sight for the near-term. The departure of CEO Mannis and chairman Lord Oxburgh in a boardroom coup late last year was suggestive of troubles at D1, although sources have pointed as much to troubles with the company’s UK-based biodiesel processing operations, which were closed.
Variations in yield estimates.
It’s understandable that crop yields vary based on inputs, climate and the skill of the farmer. But, even allowing for that, jatropha yields forecasts seem to me as scattered as atoms after a supernova.
Here is a selection.
Frost & Sullivan (2007): 1-5 tonnes of oil per hectare. Baif.org: Cited 8-10 tons of seeds per hectare sourced to “enthusiastic promoters”. Biofuels Revolution: Cited 10 tons of seeds in a report. Here’s an article that said that actual yields were one fifth of government estimates – at 1.5 to 2 tons per acre.
Here’s another at 10 – 12 tons per hectare of seeds. Here’s one that covers all the angles with a stupendously un-useful range of 0.5- 12 tons per hectare. Here’s the winner of the optimist award: The Philippine National Oil Company weighing in with a forecast of a minimum of 15 tons per hectare on the fifth year. A report distributed by (but not from) UNCTAD cites 13 tons per hectare.
Whew! That’s 0.5 to 15 in about 10 seconds. Sounds more like an accelerating Jaguar than jatropha yield data. But there you are.
India
In the South Asian heartland of jatropha, Chahattisgarh state takes the absolute cake for predictions of wealth that have not come true. Asia Clean Tech reported in 2007 that the state-owned Indian Oil Co has partnered with Chhattisgarh state to deploy jatropha. ‘No less than 500,000 people will get jobs across the state during the next 4-5 years due to these jatropha plantations,’ a senior Creda official was quoted in the ‘07 report. The JV was reported to produce up to 300 tons of biofuel per day within 4-5 years. That’s about 33 Mgy of fuel.
How does that employ 500,000 people? That’s 66 gallons – or about $150, per worker. At yields of 250 gallons per acre, that’s four workers an acre. Even in one of the poorest states in India, that’s a poor excuse for economic development and a ruinous, blundering exaggeration that is a standout reason that jatropha has earned the nickname “the wonder blunder crop”.
Myanmar
Moving from comically far-off-predictions to another dimension of hype that would be funny if it were not tragic, let’s consider the case of Myanmar.
As reported previously in the Digest, the Myanmar government set out in 2006 to cultivate 8 million acres of jatropha, in hopes of making the country more energy self-sufficient and potentially develop an export trade in jatropha oil.
The program was handed down to individual states in the form of a dictat: 500,000 acres or more per state. Individual farmers and even city dwellers were dragged into forced-planting campaigns to meet planting goals. Supervision of planting was handed off to the Army, which detailed numerous young, non-commissioned officers to supervise the work. Planting took place in plantation-style field, in hedges and home gardens.
What was missing? Besides soil testing, uh, just a few things. Like a harvesting plan. According to a Time magazine report, “My friend dutifully tends his jatropha trees and then watches the seeds fall on the ground and die. In his case, the spindly physic-nut shrubs in his garden are supplanting a fragrant frangipani tree or colorful hibiscus bush. But elsewhere in Burma — a nation where UNICEF estimates malnutrition afflicts one-third of children — farmers have had to put aside valuable crop land for a wasted plant.”
Haiti
Beyond the tragedy of Myanmar there is the deeper tragedy of Haiti, a land stripped of economic opportunity as well as forest cover.
Kathleen Robbins has been active down in Haiti for quite some time putting together a jatropha cultivation education program, next to the UN Model School. Other NGOs, it appears, have been more focused on planting than educating. According to MargeuriteLaurent.com, at least three dozen projects are active in Haiti now. One is so small it’s aim is to support a single Haitian bakery with power through cultivation of jatropha as an oil source. Would not these incredibly well-meaning NGOs do better to band together to achieve some economies of scale?
Voodoo economics
Apparently in Haiti, jatropha is used in voodoo rituals. That seems right, because the cultivation of the plant has been beset, and seems to remain so, with voodoo economics and announcements of yields and harvest potentials that are way ahead of science.
The workers actually putting jatropha seedlings in the ground and harvesting the yields, who face the daily disconnect between jatropha reality and jatropha dreams, can use all the magic they can get.
Free Subscription to the Daily Biofuels Digest e-newsletter
Subscribe FREE to the world's most-widely read biofuels daily. Enter your email in the box below,
Related Stories
Hot Topics
The Hottest 50 Companies in Bioenergy
Latest algae-to-energy news
Latest jatropha news
Latest Waste-to-energy news
Entry Information
Filed Under: Top Story
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.
