The Jatropha interest is mostly hype – all talk little action...

The Jatropha interest is mostly hype – all talk little action spurred on by NGO’s and those with no real knowledge of the subject. The NGO’s promote it because Jatropha is said to grow in low rainfall, poor soils and poorly managed (smallholder / village) areas. This is true except the yield is about 0.25 MT per Ha per year. The hype is caused by these “benefits” being linked to the possibility of obtaining 1. 892 MT per Ha per year (often quoted). It should be pointed out that this 1.892 MT per ha is on good soils with plenty of water, good management and with extraction rates at the top end (38%). In similar circumstances such areas planted to oil palm would be yielding 5 to 7 MT of Crude Oil per Ha per year (excluding the Palm Kernel Oil). There are also problems regarding moisture, dirt and Free Fatty Acid levels connected with storage of Jatropha oil. In low rainfall areas there are only 2 to 4 months when the crop is harvested. There would thus need to be a large seed storage requirement to keep processing plants operating in the 8 to 10 “lean months” of the year – think holding costs, plant operating efficiency and plant capital efficiency. On a practical level, Jatropha is a “new” crop with little long term research and empirical data from large scale operations. It is true that Jatropha produces biodiesel with a lower CFPP than Biodiesel made from Palm oil. However it also has a higher sulphur and phosphorus level and lower cetane number than Palm biodiesel.



Price is the other area that is quoted as favouring Jatropha. This presumes that the purchase price of Jatropha oils will be about 40% of Palm Oil. There is no way anyone would sell at such a price if it was similar to Palm Oil and there was a ready market for it.



Would you invest in the development of say 200,000 hectares of Jatropha plus the cost of the processing plants (sufficient for one 250,000 MT biodiesel plant) knowing that there is only a requirement for oils for lantern lighting and village medicines ( no food value uses) should this oil not be needed for biodiesel? There are, however, some efforts being made to develop Jatropha nurseries where seed can be sold at a profit to smallholders who would then be contracted to sell their seed to middlemen who would on sell to the seed / oil to Biodiesel manufacturers. This of course would shift the development risk to the villagers. For example the D1 company (the largest player in the Jatropha game) 4th quarter report for 2006 shows 124, 256 Ha planted to Jatropha of which 5155 Ha (4%) are managed and planted by their company.