Vusumuzi Sifile

MAPUTO, Mozambique (IPS) – African governments could be treading dangerously by rushing into the production of biofuels while food insecurity still stalks the continent. This could result in failing to meet the targets for biofuels, and at the same time jeopardising food security.

A number of initiatives are already under way in several African countries to produce bio-diesel and ethanol from jatropha, sugarcane and palm. Vast tracts of land have already been set aside for the production of these plants for biofuels.

A Bielenberg Ram Press for processing jatropha. Credit: R K Henning/www.jatropha.org

While biofuels are being vouched for as a solution to energy problems on the continent, scientists attending a regional meeting on food security and the environment believe some crucial calculations on the amount of land needed have not done, and this could worsen food insecurity.

“For example in Zimbabwe, I don’t believe that the calculations on biofuels and jatropha in particular have been done on the acreage that is going to be required to produce enough fuel to run our vehicles from,” said Idah Sithole-Niang, an associate professor at the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Zimbabwe. She was speaking on the sidelines of a Regional Dialogue organised by the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Policy Analysis Network.

“The concept has been proven, but what would have helped is to ask ourselves if nationally we have enough acreage to plant this material, what would be coming out of it and how fast we can regenerate the material to ensure the diesel from jatropha is available on a daily and consistent basis. That is where I think the mathematics was not done.”

In 2007, the Zimbabwe government commissioned a bio-diesel plant with a capacity to produce 90-100 million litres diesel annually from jatropha. The harvest from one hectare of jatropha is said to produce close to 2,000 litres of bio-diesel, and the plant was expected to account for ten percent of the country’s diesel supply by 2017.

However, when the plant started operations it operated at under five percent of its capacity due to insufficient jatropha supplies. Jatropha is the second major biofuel crop in Zimbabwe after sugar cane. The country stopped blending its petrol with ethanol after the severe drought in 1992 led to reduced sugar production.

Given the weak standing of most African countries in terms of food security, Sithole-Niang said it was too early for countries like Zimbabwe to rush into biofuel production. Instead, the focus should be on biotechnologies for food production. Biofuels could only be considered when the current problems of food insecurity had been solved.

Rushing into biofuels, she said, would affect mostly the poor as reduced food production – as farmland is lost to jatropha growing – will force prices up.

““It is of concern when the production of biofuels starts competing with food crops,” she argued, “especially when you are already not producing enough food to feed the nation. In some of these places, why take that first over and above food self sufficiency. There is going to be competition for the food and the fuel. The resultant high food prices will increase the burden on the poor.”

But those supporting biofuels argue that most of the land used for growing fuel plants would be either idle, under-cultivated or unsuitable for any other agricultural use. Jatropha, for example, can thrive in even in the poorest of soils that cannot sustain other crops. The protein-rich residue from the fuel production process can also be used as a feed for livestock, and biomass fertiliser for crops.

Dr Wynand van der Walt, a researcher on agricultural biotechnologies based in Pretoria, South Africa said the amount of energy used in producing biofuels can be very high, making the net gain between energy used in production and in the resulting biofuel very small.

“You use a lot of energy to produce a biofuel that is supposed to save energy. That calculation must be done. For each country, the analysis must be different. They need to do that analysis country by country. We can not, for example, we cannot base calculations on acreage in the United States,” said van der Walt.

Eugenia Barros, from the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, said the other alternative was for farmers to use food surplus to produce biofuels. But there is also a problem with this option.

“In South Africa for example, we have lots of surplus maize,” argued Barros. “There were suggestions that the surplus could be used to produce biofuels, but it was noticed that most of the surplus was actually good grain that could not be used for biofuel. And most of the time the surplus is not consistent.”

Most farmers, she said, preferred to stock the surplus maize for sale to food producers, particularly in drought times.