“Will this plant actually work for us as a replacement for diesel?”

Written by Greg Bowles, 2008

SHI’s country director in Honduras, Yovany Munguia, repeated my question back to me as he showed me acres of jatropha that have been planted on an experimental plot. “Nothing is ever certain in life, but this is something I believe to be worth the effort. If we’re right, in five year’s time we will run all of our trucks and maybe even we’ll experiment on running motorcycles off of these seeds,” he said, crushing one of the walnut-like pods in his hands to show me the seed inside. “The best part is no one will accuse us of stealing food for our biodiesel. This crop is not corn.” The seeds in Yovany’s hand can be crushed in order to produce an oil that is easily processed into fuel, similar to the fuel that is produced by more well-known biofuel sources such as sugar and corn. Although production varies and the SHI-Honduras program is at least two years away from having mature plants to experiment with, in other parts of the world jatropha has produced up to 200 gallons of biofuel per acre, without the drawbacks that have been a part of debate over food crops used as biofuels.

CORN AS BIOFUEL
The real push for alternative energy sources has come from rising gasoline prices. There is little doubt that the topic is a hot one, and boils along with the related controversial topic of global warming. One of the largest controversies associated with biofuels has nothing to do with the technical science and everything to do with hunger and poverty. Corn prices have skyrocketed in recent years, largely due to increased demand and plans for future use of corn as an ethanol product in fuel. Many scientists and analysts argue this crop is a chimera, due to the fact that the fuels used to produce corn crops as ethanol ultimately negate any savings, whether those savings are measured in terms of the environment or fuel prices. However, the more direct concern of many Central Americans is that the hunger for corn-based ethanol is one factor leading to real hunger in their region of the world.

According to World Bank figures, food prices in the world have increased by an average of 83% in the last three years, with developing countries experiencing the largest increases. In the U.S., the figure is a little more than 5%. When evaluating these increases in food prices, it is important to consider the income levels in developing countries. In the countries where SHI works, an average income for rural families fluctuates between $2 up to $6 per day. When that is what you make and have been making for the last three years, an 83% increase in your food budget is not a minor setback, but a major disaster. Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown has written, “For the world’s poorest people, many of whom spend half or more of their income on food, rising grain prices can quickly become life threatening.” That is especially true for a staple food crop such as corn.

This issue has become a political football, with accusations by some Central American leaders and international food security analysts that the U.S. policy on corn-based ethanol is at worst deliberately designed to increase poverty in the region, and at best is a policy based on indifference to that poverty. As biofuels policy adviser Rob Bailey of Oxfam puts it, “If the fuel value for a crop exceeds its food value, then it will be used for fuel instead. Rich countries... are making climate change worse, not better, they are stealing crops and land away from food production, and they are destroying millions of livelihoods in the process.”

JATROPHA AS BIOFUEL
What is jatropha and why is it a good alternative fuel source, better than corn (besides the fact that it costs about $43 per barrel to produce jatropha-based biofuels and $85 per barrel for corn-based biofuels)? And why is SHI pursuing this option? There are 175 plants under the genus of jatropha, but the optimal for biofuel production is the deciduous version of Jatropha curcus. The advantages of it as a crop are many. It can be used to prevent erosion and grows in almost any soil, including dry and saline soils. Its largest disadvantage is that there is not much solid data on producing Jatropha curcus in mass quantities. This is because the plant is not edible (and is in fact poisonous if eaten in sufficient quantity), and while its short-term impact on soils seems to be negligible, the long-term impacts have not been studied.

There are some other pitfalls to avoid, as Yovany Munguia pointed out when discussing the SHI project. “If this becomes a for-profit venture, and in five years we want it to at least be self-supporting if not profitable, we don’t want the profit to mean that families stop growing food crops and only grow jatropha. What SHI emphasizes is diversity, and that will have to include management so that no one goes hungry thinking they will get rich off of this crop.” One of the advantages of jatropha, Yovany pointed out, is because it grows in poor soils, it can be planted in areas of SHI family farms that are otherwise not used for growing anything, as long as proper management is used.

Yovany and his staff are also looking at inter-cropping among some food crops with jatropha, as the plant does not steal nutrients from other plants or crowd them out, but the program is proceeding with caution until they see first-hand whether this causes problems. In other parts of the world, jatropha has been used as a natural barrier, since it repels many insects and animals, and the by-product of oil pressed from the seeds is a cake-like substance that makes excellent fertilizer.

Yovany recently attended workshops and visited sites devoted to various forms of biodiesel production, in North Carolina and Guatemala as well as within Honduras. Based on what he has seen, he believes jatropha will be the best option for biodiesel production within the SHI Honduras program. The plants themselves have seeds within a bulb-like pod the size of a golf ball. These are first crushed and then they go through a sifting and mixing process called “transesterification” (say that three times fast). Then, the oil is separated from the seeds and converted into a liquid diesel product that burns up to 75% cleaner than regular diesel. The cleanliness factor of the fuel is the true selling point for Yovany. “We are an environmental organization,” he says. “Biodiesel is not and will not be the most important thing we do as an environmental organization, but this is an example to other organizations. SHI can be a leader in my country on this issue. We will become known to other environmental organization and aid agencies who then might be interested in what else we do, which is sustainable agriculture with our families.”

Jatropha production in Honduras is not yet a reality, but Yovany has already planted several acres with the crop, and he has put together a five-year plan for shifting SHI Honduras from use of diesel to use of biodiesel, at least for the trucks used by the program. He also hopes to market the fuel. The production facility for this will be at the demonstration site in the rural province of Yoro, where SHI also works with about 250 families in sustainable agriculture. The idea is that our families will also be involved, not just in growing the jatropha itself, but in learning about the process and potentially even in sales of the final fuel product. “This isn’t magic,” Yovany pointed out, “not for us, not for the environment. But this could be better than magic because it might really work, and it’s worth a try.”

Photo above, right: SHI Field Trainer, Dionicio Mejia, with jatropha at demonstration plot in El Rosario, Honduras
Photo above, left: SHI Field Staff, Lily Andrade & Marvin Gonzales, at a biofuels workshop in Honduras.