I am having a similar doubt here as well, is Jatropha a reality? Indeed it
is a living tree, even I had one germinated from seed as a pot plant. But is
it a reality? What make it better then the more productive oil palm if it
still need fertilizer and irrigation to thrive? Or course, Jatropha can
thrive on more soil then oil palm, and perhaps can better adapt as claimed.
And then rather then planting it in marginal land, there wont be enough
marginal land and if the demand is high, the lesser demand, such as less
profitable and labor intensive vegetable land, will be replaced with
Jatropha, or just got eaten by large plantation.
The biggest doubt in my mind is Jatropha is not been throughoutly studied
like soy bean, maize, oil palm, etc. There is no high yield hybrid avalable
but most are germinated from regular seeds and hence the quality may differ.
This will make unpredictable return for an investment, which is bad. Whats
worst is the waste of farmland into some worthless venture.
Furthermore, it is labor intensive, no mechanized harvesting available.
I believe that Jatropha can be survive in US in the more arid area. And for
maximum output, irrigation will be provided. But I strongly doubt it will
ever landed in USA as labor cost a bomb there.
1/2 cent.
Regards
Rexis
On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Keith Addison
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:
If reality, can it be done in the US or only developing nations?
I wonder what you're talking about? Jatropha is certainly a reality,
it's something that exists, it's not just hype, it's a tree. So?
There's a lot of information on jatropha in the archives. Try this, eg:
Jatropha - the agrofuel of the poor? (160 kb)
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=480
GRAIN, July 2007
Keith
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