FARMER (ambassador report for December)by Prince Foley | 17-12-2021 15:43 |
|---|
|
People have been farming for hundreds of years. Traditionally, a farmer¡¯s job has been producing food crops for human consumption. In the new-energy economy, farmland have been providing renewable energy sources for humans, not just for their bodies but for industrial use too.
For over 5 years I have been one of these farmers who grow crops for human consumption such as maize, groundnuts, soy beans and potatoes. In the recent years there have been an increase in demand for fossil fuel products for industrial use. Therefore, I thought it wise to consider but becoming one of the Jatropha curcas trees farmers. This kind of farming has some economical benefits for example it can help in creating employment opportunities amongst fellow youths in my community through farm operations and it is can also act as source of income after sales. I am further more interested in starting cultivating Jatropha curcas trees in the near future because the plant can grow and fruit on marginal or nonagricultural areas and has attractive peculiar features such as drought tolerance, pest and disease resistance, rapid growth, easy propagation, small gestation period and it is widely recognized as a potential renewable energy source. Due to the toxic nature of the plant and the extracted oil, the oil is considered unfit for food use and therefore of value in biodiesel, especially in countries that ban use of food crops for fuel use. Unlike other potential oil crops, Jatropha is so attractive that it has been planted in large scale even without the agronomic improvement and evaluation needed for adaptation as a useful crop. For example, Business and Economic Research Limited (BERL) is a private company that incentivized individual smallholders in Malawi to grow Jatropha as hedges demarcating the boundaries of their farms. BERL assisted more than 30,000 smallholders in 10 regions of Malawi to uptake Jatropha using a network of extension officers and seed buyers. These promotion, extension and buying services were discontinued in 2014, with BERL eventually focusing solely on Jatropha seed purchase and oil extraction. The farmers in Malawian villages started growing Jatropha in 2008 -2009. At that point the surveyed farmers were harvesting their second or third reaping of their first harvest season. Jatropha curcas yields substantial quantity of seed oil and is growing in importance as a source of biodiesel. It is increasing clear that biofuels can be a viable source of renewable energy in contrast to the finite nature, geopolitical instability, and deleterious global effects of fossil fuel energy. References Finkbeiner, M. 2014. Indirect land use change: help beyond the hype? Biomass and Bioenergy 62:218-221. Gasparatos, A., M. Lehtonen, and P. Stromberg. 2013b. Do we need a unified appraisal framework to synthesize biofuel impacts? Biomass and Bioenergy 50:75-80. Borman, G. D., G. P. von Maltitz, S. Tiwari, and M. C. Scholes. 2013. Modelling the economic returns to labour for Jatropha cultivation in southern Africa and India at different local fuel prices. Biomass and Bioenergy 59:70-83. |
