http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17081620/site/newsweek/
The Cinderella Plant
Africans used to think jatropha was a worthless
bush. Now it may be an important new source of energy.
By Karen Palmer
Newsweek International
Feb. 19, 2007 issue - Jatropha Circas is the
Cinderella of the plant world. Throw a seed in
the poorest soil on the planet, and up comes a
bush that will likely last 50 years. During a
drought, jatropha bushes simply drop their leaves
and keep pumping out seedpods. Livestock won't
eat it, pests don't appear to like it. For longer
than anybody can remember, Africans used it as
living fences meant to keep back the encroaching
Sahara and Kalahari deserts. It wasn't good for much else.
Now this humble bush appears poised to become a
global star. In recent years studies have shown
that jatropha oil burns with one fifth the carbon
emission of fossil fuels, making Africa's
hardscrabble ground a potentially fertile source
of energy. Scientists estimate that if even a
quarter of the continent's arable land were
plowed into jatropha plantations, output would
surpass 20 million barrels a day. That would be
good news for Europe, where the thirst for
biodiesel is growing. The European Union has
decreed that consumers will use 5.75 percent
biodiesel in motor vehicles by 2010 and 20
percent by 2020, which means that Europe has to
come up with a 10.5 billion-liter supply of
biodiesel in the next four years. With maize
prices going through the roof, scientists are
experimenting with alternative nonfood crops in
the lab; so far, jatropha is the only one ready for commercialization.
The result has been a land rush of sorts in
Africa. Experimental jatropha plantations are now
popping up in virtually every corner of the
continent, from Kenya, to Ghana, to South Africa.
It's difficult to say how much African land is
currently being cultivated with jatropha, but
there are fields in Benin, Mali, Senegal and
Nigeria, and at least 990,000 hectares in Burkina Faso.
Norwegian, Indian and British companies are
racing to buy up or lease enormous swaths of
African land for jatropha plantations. U.K.-based
D1 Oils has bought 20,000 hectares in Malawi and
15,000 hectares in Zambia. India's IKF Tech has
requested government leases for a total of
150,000 hectares of land in Swaziland, Mozambique
and South Africa. Worldwide Bio Refineries, a
U.K. firm, has 40,000 hectares set aside for
production in Nigeria, with planting to begin in
May. A biofuel conference in Cape Town last month
drew 200 attendants, prompting one participant to
declare: "Southern Africa has the potential to be the Middle East of biofuels."
Such claims may be premature. To be sure,
jatropha plantations could give Africa an
economic boost. "I think jatropha is something
that will carry many economies to new heights,"
says Ephraim Boakye-GyImah, a supervisor at the
AngloGold Ashanti gold mine in Obuasi, which
began planting jatropha seedlings in reclaimed
mine waste in central Ghana last year. So far,
however, most ventures are still in the planting
and growing stages; at present, the continent is
producing almost no jatropha oil. "If we had the
finest refinery here today, we still couldn't
operate because there's no feedstock," admits
Jack Holden, director of Goldstar Biodiesel, a biofuels firm.
African countries are trying to attract foreign
investment to ramp up the number of farms. Ghana,
for instance, has earmarked $1.6 million as seed
money to help establish jatropha plantations. In
addition to being skittish about Africa,
investors are skeptical that the continent has
infrastructure to support full-scale oil
production, which requires refinery and
transportation. African farmers, who've known
jatropha only as a weed, have been slow to catch
on to its new status in the world. Three years
ago the Adventist Development and Relief Agency
used a $50,000 grant from the United Nations
Development Program to persuade 3,000 farmers
into setting aside one-half hectare each for
jatropha, to try to develop a supply of seeds for
farmers. But no one has been willing to buy the
seeds. "The farmers would go out at night and cut
down the jatropha trees because their neighbors
were laughing at them," says Holden. "They
haven't been able to sell a single seed." If
Africa is going to be the next Middle East, farmers better get planting.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
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