Nairobi — Hundreds of farmers are turning up everyday at Green Power East Africa’s biodiesel plant in Nairobi, hoping to find their niche in what is being touted as the next big thing in agri-business.
“They want to talk about the rising star on the biofuel scene, the jatropha – an oil-rich plant that was considered a mere weed until a few years ago,” says Gregor von Drabich, the founder of Green Power East Africa.
Now this weed is being hailed as the fuel of the future, and much of its development is taking place in Africa. Foreign firms such as UK-based D1Oils and Sun Biofuels are ramping up jatropha planting across the continent, offering seeds and technical assistance to farmers in return for the sale of their crops.
In Kenya, this effort has been boosted by the setting up of a taskforce to oversee the growing of jatropha and explore possible avenues of selling carbon credits. Zimbabwe too is pushing jatropha as a way out of its energy crisis.
All this is happening despite the fact that very little is known about just how much energy the plant can produce, and at what cost.
While the US has been producing (heavily subsidised) ethanol on a commercial scale for decades, no-one is yet processing jatropha oil in significant amounts. Like any new crop, it remains a largely unproven venture that could take many years to generate profits, if at all.
“There are many unknowns about this crop, probably more than what we know,” admits Graham Prince, spokesman for D1Oils.
It is easy to see why jatropha has African governments and foreign investors so excited. So far, measures to tackle global warming by the West have only hurt the continent. Efforts to reduce pollution from air transport threaten exports of Kenyan and Ghanaian fresh produce and the health of African tourism.
Nor has Africa managed to capitalise much on opportunities for carbon trading, a system that allows developing world businesses that reduce their impact on the environment to sell credits on world markets.
Jatropha could be Africa’s first real chance to profit from the booming biofuels market and allow it to solve its energy problems at the same time. The tropical plant grows in poor and arid soil conditions and can be grown on land that has fallen out of agricultural production or in wasteland.Its seeds yield up to 40 per cent oil, and once processed, the waste seed cake could be sold as an organic fertiliser. Most importantly, though, jatropha is not edible so increased planting will not put pressure on food supply, say proponents.
This is the feature driving strong international interest in the plant. The use of food crops like sugar and maize to produce ethanol for fuel in the US and Brazil has tightened supply, pushing global food prices, and fears for food security, to record highs in recent months.
But turning jatropha into a cost-efficient fuel source is still contingent on a number of variables. Although better than rape or soya, other oilseeds used for biofuel, jatropha oil yields of 1.7 tonnes per hectare (when grown in the wild) are still significantly lower than that of palms growing in Malaysia, points out M R Chandran, an advisor to the Malaysian Palm Oil Association. These have yields of between 4-5 tonnes per hectare.
And the high labour requirements for jatropha will make it much more costly to produce. The plant produces its golf-ball size fruits and flowers at the same time so cannot be mechanically harvested.
This is a positive point for employment in Africa and makes it suitable for smallholder farmers such as those participating in a Dutch-backed start-up in Mali or the farmers contracted by D1Oils in Swaziland who have recently won their first jobs ever.
NGOs are keen to see biofuel crops relying more heavily on smallholder producers. Robert Bailey, a policy advisor at Oxfam, says that plantations tend to have a much weaker impact on reducing poverty than if the farmer owns his own land.
But for firms like D1Oils, aiming to export around half of its production in Africa and India to the West, relying on thousands of small farmers for a sizeable commercial production may prove challenging. There could be difficulties over land rights, with firms seeking to plant jatropha needing to involve state governments.
And despite being lauded for its potential to grow in desert-like conditions, jatropha requires inputs like fertiliser and irrigation if it is to achieve worthwhile oil yields. D1Oils estimates it needs between 300 and 1,000 ml of water a year for optimum output.
“The general message is that this is a lazyman’s crop, you just plant, leave it there and harvest it. But you won’t get the yield you need without some inputs,” explains M R Chandran.
Mr Prince agrees. “One of the dangers is that people are going to plant it in the wrong places in unsuitable land where it won’t give good yields.”
But relying only on large-scale plantations will increase the risk of jatropha replacing fertile agricultural land, removing its much vaunted advantage as a non-edible crop, say critics like Hugo Verkuijl, chief executive of Mali Biocarburant, a start-up company backed by the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands which counts local farmers among its shareholders.
Jatropha crops could become more efficient. D1Oils, which believes it is at least two years ahead of other companies in gathering knowledge about the plant, has found a variety in Cape Verde that produces much more oil than that found in other regions, about 2.7 tonnes of oil per hectare. Seeds from this variety should be ready for planting in 2008.
Von Drabich cites German research suggesting that yields could be even higher.
“From research I have seen, under ideal conditions, you should be able to get up to six tonnes per hectare when the trees are mature.”
But the variation in estimates is an indicator of the big unknown surrounding jatropha.As with any fossil fuel alternative, it must be economical when compared with petroleum and when information about yields is still lacking the economics are hard to assess. Accurate information about yields will not be available until trees reach maturity -five to six years after planting.
The success of jatropha as a biofuel will also take time to gauge. With little production so far -most people are still working on developing seeds -its performance in different engines cannot be evaluated.
“It’s a new market and a new crop and the refining of jatropha oil into biodiesel is a new, unproven technology in Africa,” warns Mr Verkuijl.
The risks have not stopped companies like D1Oils and Kenya’s Green Power East Africa from investing in the crop.
The British firm started to plant jatropha in early 2006 and now has 175,000 hectares around the world, with 40,000 of these in Swaziland, Zambia and Madagascar and the rest in India and south-east Asia.
It is expecting to harvest its first significant volumes by the end of 2007, allowing it to predict fruit volumes and the required labour.
Green Power East Africa is also starting its own plantations in Malawi and has small trials underway in Kenya. “We’re looking at 100,000 hectares in each country [in East Africa],” says Mr Von Drabich, naming Tanzania and Mozambique as areas for future development.
He adds that African growers can learn from the mistakes made initially in India, where some of the world’s first jatropha plantations are being set up. “There have been some successful and some not so successful trials. We have learned from that although I’m sure there will be other challenges ahead.”
One challenge already encountered in Kenya is the red beetle, which munches its way through jatropha leaves. When it finally reaches the market, jatropha oil should track energy prices, which will drive its demand, claims D1Oils.
“If we can get the logistics right, we would look at prices of $570 to $625 per tonne, which is below the current palm oil price,” says Mr Prince.
Palm oil has recently surged to $770 per tonne, up from $417 per tonne in June 2006, and higher than even crude oil. This has led to most biofuel plants in Malaysia being abandoned.
Mr Von Drabich reckons on getting better prices, similar to palm and other edible oils. For him, the potential outweighs the risk. “The demand is not going to go away. All those people in India and China want cars. In Europe, they have to meet demand for five per cent of diesel made up of biofuel. It’s an extremely big chance for Africa.”
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