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(START) Jatropha Boom Yields Tough Lessons
Credit: Manipadma Jena, HYDERABAD, India, 20-Sep-2010 (IPS)
The jatropha fruit can give 40 percent oil, and the dried biomass - leaf and branches - 30 percent.
- With a gas-guzzler of an economy, India had been spending tens of billions of dollars annually to import petroleum. And so its 2009 policy on biofuels mandated that by 2017, India would have enough biofuel production to cover at least 20 percent of the country’s oil consumption.
The government has in fact been encouraging the cultivation of jatropha curcas for the past seven years, believing that would be the fastest way to have the volume of biofuel the country would need – 13 million tonnes, or 30 times more biodiesel than what is being produced at present.
But now, even green groups are saying India’s biofuel efforts have fallen into a rut.
In fact, Suneel Parasnis, Asia coordinator of Private Financing Advisory Network (PFAN), a multilateral agency bringing innovative clean energy projects to interested investors, says, "Biofuels have failed because of unavailability and high price of stock feed for biodiesel processing plants all over India."
Yet banker-turned-biofuel producer Sreenivas Ghatty retorts, "That’s because we put the cart before the horse."
Indeed, inadequate preparation and understanding seem to have been major contributors to India’s bumpy trip of its biofuel programme. But so too has been the greed of fly-by- night operators who made quick profits by selling seeds, saplings, and unrealistic dreams of profit to gullible farmers.
At first glance, jatropha seemed to be the perfect biofuel source for India, just as it has been touted for many developing countries. For one, it was touted for having the ability to grow on ‘waste’ land, thus skirting a fuel- versus-food conflict. For another, each of its seeds can have as much as 40-percent oil content. The plant itself is carbon-neutral as well, absorbing as much carbon dioxide as it releases later as fuel.
A federal planning commission report in 2003 also said that potentially 36 million hectares in India – mostly government waste and forest land, land beside railway tracks and protective hedge around private agro-farms – were ideal for jatropha plantations. By 2006, many Indian farmers and oil companies were growing jatropha, their enthusiasm fuelled by land and tax incentives offered by the government.
Farmers have since discovered that jatropha produces much higher yields on fertile, irrigated land and needs chemical fertilisers as well. And while it may survive on ‘waste’ land, it will not grow in volumes that would pay off for small-time farmers.
"One of the biggest problems is having farmers pull out of jatropha before fruit- bearing starts by the third year," says K Koteshwar Rao of Nandan Biomatrix, an integrated biofuel research-producer here in Hyderabad, which recently acquired global patents for higher oil-yield genotypes of jatropha. "For the next 35 years they need only tend and harvest, but they run out of patience."
"We are (also) advising multi-cropping of dryland legumes, pulses, and oilseeds to sustain the initial no- income period," he adds.
According to Rao, one jatropha shrub at its full-grown height of three metres would need "up to two litres of survival watering per non-rainy day".
"One deep bore well could suffice for a 50-hectare plantation," he adds. "Nutrient requirement per hectare works out to 50 to70 kilogramme nitrogen, 50 kg phosphorous, 70 kg potassium, along with 30 kg sulphur."
"Going for large-scale plantations without the proper set of practices is risky, and more importance should be given to research and development work focusing on the genetic improvement of the species, and agronomic practices," he cautions.
Unsurprisingly, state governments that had proactively established separate entities to promote jatropha biodiesel just five years ago are less enthusiastic today.
The central state of Chhattisgarh, for instance, was revving up to become India’s jatropha hub in 2005. A check of Chhattisgarh Bio-fuel Development Authority’s website reveals that the last entry under its ‘achievements’ is dated September 2007.
Big-time investors, however, remain attracted by the prospect of biofuel profits – and sometimes use questionable means to get these, say activists.
"Land grabs by private biofuel investors are high in poorest and least resistant areas in eastern state of Orissa and Central India," says activist Puspanjali Satpathy of the Bhubaneswar-based environmental non-profit group Vasundhara.
Just this year in Bolangir, Orissa, private enterprises, including a technical college, lured farmers into growing jatropha by offering 175 U.S. dollar loans to buy seeds and saplings. Under the scheme, the loans would be repaid from jatropha seed harvests. But the deal has apparently been set up in such a way that by harvest time three years later, the farmers would have already lost these very lands to an irrigation project there.
In Patnagarh, in the same district in Orissa, about 162 hectares were bought by a Delhi-based private enterprise in 2005. But now the former landowners – local farmers – say that they had been led to think the deal, which they say had been brokered by district officials, was a three-year lease agreement. The angry villagers are taking legal recourse to get back their land.
All these have left firm biofuel believers like Ghatty frustrated. Now a consultant based in Melbourne, Australia, Ghatty insists, "(Alternative) energy sources need to be developed – there are no two ways about that. Biofuels are the cheapest and the most sustainable alternative." He points out that jatropha biodiesel can be produced and consumed locally in remote areas – to run irrigation pumps and lighter transport vehicles, and light up homes. But, he says, the policies for grassroots energy security must be clear-cut.
These policies "should lead to energy self-sufficiency in regional, remote areas, promoting area development", says Satpathy. "But first, we need a social audit on biofuels." (END)
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Johan Schiphorst, IENG. MIET.
