The Blunder Crop: a Biofuels Digest special report on jatropha biofuels development
Willie Lester and Rodney Brown penned the song "I Can't Win for Losing", but it's Lester Brown's critique of biofuels that comes to mind when considering the hopes for, and stumbles of, the jatropha industry.
Kirk Haney tells me there’s nothing to worry about with his jatropha biofuels company, SG Biofuels, and I believe him. A successful practioner of sustainable forestry in Central America via the teak trade, Haney has assembled a top-tier team for SG and is doing the soil testing and the extensive planning — the “hard, dirty work of progress”, to borrow Rob Elam’s memorable phrase — that will turn jatropha dreams into actual viable industry.
He’s joined by a handful of jatropha developers like Mission New Energy and GEM that are getting it done, making it happen.
Elsewhere, things would be going great if they weren’t going so badly.
Well-organized efforts are in the minority. More typical: back-of-the-comic book jatropha seed and seedling marketers that prey on the hopes and fears of cash-strapped farmers; the farcical disaster that has developed in Myanmar’s national biofuels project; and a number of non-profits (some well-organized, some dreamy) running around in Haiti trying to save the country from deforestation with projects as small as one designed to provide heat and power to a local bakery.
Jatropha is realizing less than half its projected yields in most projects, and less than a third of optimistic estimates that led jatropha to be labeled “the wonder crop”.
The problem? Countries like Myanmar that planned 8 million acres of jatropha and then forgot about harvesting technology, crushers, biodiesel processing or anything approaching a distribution system. The Result? Jatropha seeds rotting in Myanmar’s fields. The cure? Getting back to sound planning, extensive soil testing, and excellence in project management.
Here are some updates from the field. It’s a fairly shocking portrait of progress inhibited.
Main factors?
1. Hype that cites jatropha’s “poor soil” tolerance and high yields without noting that jatropha survives, but hardly thrives, in very poor soil.
2. The lack of mechanical harvesters.
3. The lack of adequate soil testing in the rush to plant.
A world with half as many seedlings and twice the number of harvesters and crushers would a better world be.
Here are some reports from the frontiers:
China.
In 2007, China Confidential said that China aimed to have 13 million jatropha hectares planted, with a yield of 0.4 tonnes of oil per hectare on an ongoing basis. As of today, just a handful of plantations in fact exist.
D1 Oils.
It started with gigantic promise, and remains jatropha’s biggest project developer and biggest hope. However, D1’s operations in Africa have proven disappointing, with a regional management shakeup announced last September and an annoucnement that “the planting position will continue to be kept under review.”
Former chairman Lord Oxburgh told National Geographic that initial production would commence in 2007. Former CEO Elliot Mannis later predicted to Reuters in January of 2008 that the first significant harvests of jatropha would be in the second half of 2008, but only 1,000 tonnes of oil were harvested in all. That’s roughly enough for 300,000 gallons of biodiesel.
Overall the company is reporting 257,370 hectares under cultivation, the majority in northeast India in a JV with tea giants Williamson Magor. In January 2008, the company told Reuters it had 202,000 hectares under cultivation (which later was trimmed in company stock filings to 192,016 as of March 2008). The company predicted in September 2008 that it would increase its plantations to 300,000 hectares by year end but confirmed in February that total planting had not increased since the September update.
The growth rates suggest it will be some time before the company realizes its overall goal of planting 2.5 million acres (1.01 million hectares), and to this reporter there appears to be persistent difficulties in projecting the timing and volume of production.
Continue to part II with more on D1, plus updates from Myanmar, China and Haiti.
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