Jatropha farmers walk on slippery ground

Biofuel has been touted as the panacea to the world’s perennial energy crisis, a silver bullet that would quench the growing global demand for oil with limited negative impact on the environment — a major topic the world over.

As the international oil price rallied towards $150 a barrel in 2008, the developed world turned its attention to idle land in Africa, with numerous European NGOs introducing oil plants like jatropha to farmers saying it could be the continent’s next big thing – a likely principal export and an alternative fuel that could improve the speed of industrialisation in a continent with eyes on the middle-income status.

Such was the excitement in Majiwa, a remote village in the outskirts of Bondo town in Nyanza Province when the international NGOs came knocking in 2006.

With the encouragement of Mr Tor Steiner Rafoss, one of the international bio-diesel agents, the villagers formed the Nam Lolwe Jatropha Caucus for the purpose of pooling resources to promote cultivation of the hitherto foreign oil plant. Mr Rafoss donated seeds to start the jatropha project.

Years since, the hope for a better life among the farmers is fading. They are asking about the promised “ready market” for the wonder plant.

Mr Joseph Odembo of the Nam Lolwe group and a member of the lobby, Action Resort for Change (ARC), the local NGO that invited the international agents, the waiting for the promised “ready market” for the trees is taking too long.

“We have not been able to find a market for the trees which have been ready for the last two years but farmers are still optimistic that one day a good deal will come and they will be able to see the fruits of their labour”, he said

Farmers who abandoned cotton in the 1980s because of delayed payments readily embraced the bio-diesel producing plant.

Mr Odembo says the 100 members of Nam Lolwe have 6,000 Jatropha plants which have given very good yields but have been keeping the seeds due to lack of proper market.

“After two years, Mr Rafoss came and bought the seeds at Sh2,000 per kilo and the farmers were so excited, but after that no much sales has been made,” said Mr Odembo.

The Majiwa case cuts across the country, especially those who abandoned their traditional cash and food crops for the untested oil plants.

With Brazil where biofuel use has taken root, international NGOs — mostly the fronting for huge oil consumers in the west —encouraged Africans to turn to oil seed production, sometime running into problems with the food security campaigners.

In 2008, food policy analysts blamed high food prices partly on the large scale conversion of American corn and soybeans, French sugar beet, Brazilian sugarcane and peanuts from Benin to biofuel.

In Kenya, the farming fraternity rejected the 2008 proposal by Agriculture minister William Ruto to put some 500 acres of Agricultural Development Corporation farms to jatropha production.

The ministry has since declared a policy that restricts biofuels development to arid and semi-arid lands (Asals) where they cannot pose direct competition to food crops.