Re: [Biofuel] Jatropha Curcas

[DHAWA PESCAS, LDA]

Hi BellaBok   Sounds like a cool plan. You don't have to get the seed from India, you can get it from Zimbabwe at the government nursery in Harare. If you know any people who live in Harare, ask them to go to the government nursery and speak to David in the seed dept. I have seen it growing here in Quelimane, Mozambique, where we are living at the moment and I could probably get some seed down to you if you gave me your address, we have guys from South Africa travelling back and forth all the time.   I grew Jatropha in Ruwa, about 30 km from Harare and they did quite well there. What I found with them is the seed is very difficult to get out of the outer shell but maybe you can invent or buy a machine to do that part of the job.   Have you thought of using Lucinia (don't know how to spell it). I am not sure of the oil content but I think the tree will do well in your hard conditions. I am sure you have hundreds of goats in that area so it will be good as goat feed as well as giving you oil and you can feed the seed cake to the earth worms as well. Your problem will be keeping the goats out of the plantation while the trees are trying to grow. I can get some of this seed to you as well, it grows here.   Good luck with your plan.   Jed ----- Original Message ----- From: isabel taylor To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 8:27 PM Subject: [Biofuel] Jatropha Curcas We are thinking of planting  Jatropha Curcas trees & using earth worms to compost waste, the compost we get from the worms we will use for the Jatropha trees.   We  are think of only planting Jatropha because of the following reasons:    1. Once planted the Jatropha trees bear for approximately 50 years.       2. We have ordered seeds from India and we intend planting these seeds and once the trees are old enough we take cuttings from them, we will supply the local people with these cuttings so that they will be able to establish small plantations. Apparently Jatropha grows easily from cuttings and the cuttings produce fruits earlier than Jatropha planted from seeds.      3. Once again we will assist the local people to establish simple hand presses that would be able to  press the fruit and the oil once filtered can be used directly in there tractors and stationery engines. We will teach them to start up on normal diesel and then switch over to the Jatropha oil once the engines are warm and to switch back to diesel again before shutting off the engine so that none of the Jatropha oil is left inside the diesel pump and pipes, filter etc. of the engine. People who do not have tractors or engines can sell the oil or the fruit on the open market.     4. The compost that the worms produce for them they can use in their own plantations or gardens or sell on the open market.       5. Oh! I nearly forgot we are up in the north eastern section of South Africa (Limpopo province) the area were we are is supposed to be sub tropical but the last 4 years has been very dry and we have not received any where near our normal rainfall and this year so far is the worse. Limpopo is the poorest province in South Africa. One advantage we have is that there is large tracts of land that can be used for planting and the quality of the soil generally is not bad, now all we need is for our normal rainfall to return.     6.One of the reason we are thinking of using Jatropha is because we understand it grows in all conditions and will even grow in semi arid regions, it never goes below 8 degrees Celsius here.     7. Locally there are no sources of used vegetable oils etc. to enable us to try and make bio diesel so we will wait until we are able to produce our own oil and them learn how to convert it to bio diesel.    There are many other reasons that we are thinking of going exclusively with jatropha but you must understand that we are only going on what we have read and have no practical experience and would appreciate any input and advice from anyone as we do not want to disappoint the local people, to them it would be a tremendous boast if this plan can work.   I hope I am allowed to post such a lengthy question and that it is relevant to the list? Greetings BellaBok            _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/

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