Project: Jatropha Curcas and Locally Made Bio-Diesel

Jatropha Curcus may well be the miracle tree that Mwazisi’s farmers need to reverse the decades of environmental degredation largely caused by tobacco farming. Jatropha will diversify Mwazisi’s tobacco dominated farming, prevent the massive soil erosion caused by deforestation and unsustainable agriculture, and best of all be a tremendous income generator. Jatropha (Kamsatsi in Chichewa, and Physic Nut in English) grows in the poorest soil, and the driest climates. It is resistant to pests, and its leaves are poisonous so farm animals won’t eat it. The tree takes only eighteen months to seed and grows for fifty years. Seeds can be pressed into a clean burning bio-fuel. A local buyer is already in Malawi; Bio-Energy Resources Limited (BERL). They will buy the seeds from the farmers now at a good price to encourage the trees expansion countrywide, so the first step for us in Mwazisi is to grow the trees. It’s never a bad thing to plant more trees, so we may as well start planting and see where this tree can take Mwazisi.

Jatropha could be an alternative cash crop for Mwazisi’s tobacco farmers, so it is useful to start off with some background information about tobacco farming issues pertaining to cash crop farming. Most local farmers wouldn’t say there’s a problem, in fact there’s a gleam in their eye as they tell you how many bails they hope to sell next year. The local forestry extension worker and he will tell you it’s an environmental nightmare, yet he still plants most of his fields with tobacco. Ask him why, he responds, “What other options do I have?” For the past 25 years Tobacco has been the only cash crop grown in Mwazisi. During the Kamuzu Banda Era tobacco was licensed to a limited few plantations, but then the World Bank stepped in and demanded a free market where all farmers were permitted to grow tobacco. Small-holder farms rushed to convert their fields from maize to the more profitable tobacco, and have married themselves to this very destructive crop over a short period of time. Now that tobacco has become Mwazisi’s only cash crop, it is difficult to tell a local farmer to stop making money for his family in the name of preserving the environment. But, in Jatropha there is a viable alternative; one that can improve the health of the local environment by regenerating forest cover and top-soil.

So why is Tobacco so bad? In the Mwazisi Valley it is the biggest contributor to deforestation. Anybody who has lived in Mwazisi for more than ten years will tell you the local landscape has dramatically changed; forestland has turned to tobacco fields, and the old fields have now turned to dust. All land is considered public here, so if a farmer wants to grow more tobacco he receives permission from the village headmen and opens a new field in the bush, chopping down any trees in the way then burning off the remaining vegetation, to prepare to plant in the upcoming rainy season. He is then able to grow tobacco for the next three to five years, which eats up all the nutrients in the growing season then allows the topsoil to wash away in the rainy season with no trees to prevent erosion. More trees are cut down to build “gafas”, the long sheds used to hang and dry the tobacco leaves before grading. This whole process has been a disaster for the regions topsoil, according to a 1992 World Bank Study loss of topsoil in Malawi averaged over 20 tons per hectare per annum, with rates over 50 tons in areas with heavy tobacco production.

All of this deforestation and erosion has caused a severe water availability problem as well. The Mwazisi River was once a perennial river providing irrigation of maize fields in the dambo (the wetland area surrounding the river) throughout the dry season, now the Mwazisi rips and roars through the valley in the rainy season washing away everything including bridges and surrounding roads. With no trees or vegetation to hold up the water table in the dry season the river dries up, the ground turns rock hard, and the Garden of Eden turns into a brown wasteland until the rains come again in November. After the tobacco and topsoil erosion has depleted the soil it’s time to just move deeper into the bush and clear a new plot, and the deforestation continues. In Malawi it’s the rapid expansion of tobacco farming, coupled with firewood collection, and man made bushfires that have destroyed the forestland and local environment. But this type of desertification is found all over Sub-Saharan Africa culminating in a 21rst century African dust bowl.

Not only is tobacco causing deforestation, topsoil erosion, and water scarcity, it is also an economically unsustainable crop for the hard working farmers that have become dependent on it as their only cash crop. According to a 2003 FAO study report entitled Issues in the Global Tobacco Economy, Tobacco generated about K 12 billion of export revenue in 1999 and accounted for more than one third of total revenue from agriculture and about 15 percent of GDP in the same year. The health risks associated with smoking tobacco have led to global efforts to reduce smoking. Rising cigarette taxes, education, anti-smoking ad-campaigns, and smoking restrictions, will only continue to kill this already dying market. The massive Jump in tobacco production in Malawi over the past decade has quickly outpaced the declining market causing a sharp drop in prices and thus a drop in the farmer’s income. The price has also declined as inexperienced and unequipped farmers have started taking up tobacco farming, decreasing the overall quality of tobacco produced in Malawi. According to the same report, “the total output of burley tobacco in 2000 was 20 percent higher than in 1996, but the total revenue was 24 percent lower than in 1996.” More farmers are cutting down tress to open new fields, but every year getting paid less and less.

Three exporting companies now control 90 percent of total tobacco exports coming out of Malawi, so the small number of buyers paired with Malawian farmer’s desperate need for money has given the buyers control over the market. These companies make maximum profits, and the farmers get a mere fraction. The prices saw a small spike this year due to the emergence of a new Chinese market, which will encourage the Mwazisi farmers to up their production even more for next year. What they don’t realize is that it is still a dying market, and when it finally dries up they will be left empty-handed and see that their once fertile soil has washed away to a desert wasteland.

But for now every April the tobacco farmers race to bale their harvested tobacco and get it to the auction floors in Mzuzu and Lilongwe. Auction season is a party. After selling their bales many of the farmers stay in the bomas where they celebrate away their new found money on drinking binges and shopping sprees. When the money runs out and the family suffers through the hunger of another dry season they resolve to plant even more tobacco before the next rains, hoping to earn enough at the following years auction to better provide for the family. This obsession with tobacco is especially strong in Rumphi district (the district Mwazisi is in) one of the areas that tobacco grows best.

Many people in Malawi recognize the need for crop diversification. In Chitipa and Mzuzu, coffee has presented an alternative, although slow to produce profit since the initial growing period is about seven years. This is irrelevant in Mwazisi though, where the villagers tell me the climate is not right for coffee growing, although I’m not convinced and would like to experiment with that possibility. A former tobacco plantation owner in Bolero is also trying, with moderate success, to give farmers in Rumphi district the alternative of growing Paprika. Along with other herbs and spices Paprika may provide another option for diversification, but they also have their drawbacks. Paprika is in the same family as tobacco, and planting it in fields that were once tobacco can easily spread disease. Paprika is also prone to pests and needs lots of attention and pesticides. Jatropha on the other hand is virtually pest resistant, and being a tree needs little care once it is established, just let it grow, and harvest the seeds, a major change from Tobacco which needs a tremendous amount of time and labor.

I’m by no means the first person to see the potential of Jatropha for Malawi. In fact there’s already an existing market for Jatropha started and run completely in Malawi. A group of interested individuals from a variety of backgrounds have formed an organization called BERL (Bio Energy Resources Limited). BERL is encouraging farmers all over Malawi to grow Jatropha and hopes to soon start pressing the seeds and processing bio-fuel. Already BERL will buy the seeds produced by farmers at 15 Malawian Kwatcha per KG, about the equivalent of maize. At present BERL buys the seeds for the purpose of redistributing them to farmers, and increasing the amount of Jatropha grown nationwide. Currently a farm family’s cash income averages $290 per annum. Growing a hectare of Jatropha could add another $200 to this. Once Jatropha has been established on a wide-scale then they will start setting up permanent collection points and processing plants with the hope of eventually having two processing plants (twenty four in total) for every suitable district in Malawi, allowing mass production with minimal transport. BERL is very concerned with not only giving Malawian farmers a fair price but also with producing quality jobs in the production process. They are also very focused on environmental sustainability. After pressing they will compost the nitrogen and phosphorus rich seed cake to produce a natural fertilizer.

BERL has all of the makings of a company that can boost for Malawi’s farmers, economically and ecologically. BERL can provide a sustainable alternative for the tobacco farmers in Mwazisi. I look forward to seeing BERL develop into a tremendous opportunity for Malawian farmers. Anybody interested in supporting the development of Bio-fuels world-wide, or sustainable economic development in one of the world’s least developed countries has a chance to help both of these causes by supporting the development of this up and coming company. I want to see BERL develop from the start as a business that Maximizes Malawi’s natural capital, meaning it generates the maximum profit from Malawi’s natural resources for its farmers without damaging the local environment that provides those resources. In fact Jatropha trees would help to regenerate that local environment.

My role in all of this is to get the farmers in Mwazisi to start planting, and we already have a head start. During swearing-in I bought 5,000 polyethylene tubes for the purpose of starting a reforestation tree nursery with the local Natural Resource Committee. We are planting a variety of trees that have various practical, medicinal, and agricultural uses. When I read an article in Newsweek about Jatropha’s high potential for making bio-diesel, and recalled it as a tree that we learned about during training to be very useful for soap and candle making, I decided to go to the Land Resource Center in Lilongwe and buy 1 kg of seeds to include in our nursery. So we already have a good stock of Jatropha seeds to plant at the beginning of the rainy season. Living fences are a great way to grow Jatropha because it grows thick, is pest and animal resistant, and residue that falls from its branches helps soil fertility. The biggest advantage of encouraging farmers to plant Jatropha as a fence is that we are not asking anybody to replace food crops that are grown in the field, or their beloved tobacco for that matter, Alleviating any worries people have of taking a risk on a new and unknown tree.

One thing that I have learned from BERL is that direct sowing of Jatropha seeds at the beginning of the rainy season (November/December) is more effective and clearly cheaper and less labor intensive then planting the seeds in Poly tubes. So we will save the seeds I bought and plant different trees in the nursery and direct-sow in October. We have started digging the holes for planting and filling them up with compost so that we can easily just start sowing the seeds when the rains come. Two of BERL’s founders Timothy Mahoney and Laurie Webb have even offered to come to Mwazisi with more seeds so we can have a local training session on direct-sowing and care for the trees.

The final phase that I would like to be involved in before leaving Mwazisi would be to actually make bio-fuel in Mwazisi for use in the local maize mills, and if refined well enough the Matola (local transport). Actually pressing and making bio-diesel in Mwazisi is obviously useful for the community as a source of cheap, self-made fuel. It is even more useful for demonstrating to the local farmers that this fuel will run in a diesel engine, and therefore give them an idea of Jatropha’s future value and encourage them to plant more. In order to do this we would need to either build a local press or else raise money to buy a more advanced one. The process of producing the oil is very simple, it’s just a matter of mixing the oil with a catalyst and letting the reaction take place. The preferred catalyst is potassium hydroxide but calcium hydroxide will work and is a locally available constituent of fertilizer. Etnahol also produced in Malawi can be used as the alcohol. The only equipment needed is a press (can be made locally), a water heater (maybe a solar water heater), and two tanks one of which needs to have a drain on its bottom.

Another exciting use is illumination. Jatropha oil burns smokeless, and so is ideal for Paraffin lanterns. Malawians already know Jatropha’s power as an illuminant, I have been told that its seeds were traditionally shelled and put on the end of a stick to act as a candle Paraffin is extremely hard to find in Mwazisi, and is far to expensive for most villagers. With a large stock of Jatropha we could press a portion of the seeds to be put directly into the lamps. What an exciting prospect, to be able to say that we brought light to Mwazisi with this simple tree.

It is uses like this that will encourage the farmers to plant more Jatropha, and eventually provide the seed base that BERL needs to start real significant production. Who knows where it could go from there? A huge growing market for Bio-Fuels is developing world-wide. Maybe someday Malawi will be the Saudi Arabia of Bio-Fuels. At the very least it’s something to spark hope and interest in Malawi’s farmers. Jatropha has really taken over my thoughts lately, and I’m sure my friends are tired of hearing about it. When I travel with the local soccer team on the weekends I encourage people I’m chatting with to plant it. When I’m in Lilongwe or Mzuzu lots of my time is dominated by looking for and processing information about Jatropha, and bio-diesel. I can’t wait to see where this thing goes, and how BERL develops. If any of you have suggestions, criticisms, or ideas make a comment or e-mail me at umdcarr@msn.com. I want to try to make this as effective, environmentally sustainable, and profitable as possible, so I’m looking for help.