Seeds of discontent: the 'miracle' crop that has failed to deliver:A new 'ethical' biofuel is damaging the impoverished people it was supposed to help

BP已经退出印度和坦赞尼亚的巨资项目的今天,中海油却要发展云贵川和海南的同样巨资项目,小心为妙.

By Cahal Milmo and Andrew Wasley
from

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/seeds-of-discontent-the-miracle-crop-that-has-failed-to-deliver-1899530.html

Monday, 15 February 2010

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 A "miracle" plant, once thought to be as the answer to producing renewable biofuels on a vast scale, is driving thousands of farmers in the developing world into food poverty, a damning report concludes today.

Five years ago jatropha 麻风树 was hailed by investors and scientists as a breakthrough in the battle to find a biofuel alternative to fossil fuels that would not further impoverish developing countries by diverting resources away from food production.

Jatropha was said to be resistant to drought and pests and able could grow on land that was unsuitable for food production. But researchers have found that it has increased poverty in countries including India and Tanzania.

Millions of the plants have been grown in anticipation of rich returns, only for growers to be hit by poor yields, conflict over land and a lack of infrastructure to process the oil-rich seeds.

Oil giant BP, which planned to spend almost £32m on a joint venture to set up jatropha plantations, has now pulled out and the charity ActionAid today warns that jatropha needs to be cultivated on prime food-growing land to produce significant yields.

According to one estimate, up to one million hectares of jatropha – an area equivalent to Devon and Cornwall combined – are being cultivated around the globe, despite little evidence that it can produce enough oil to make the crop commercially sustainable.

Meredith Alexander, head of trade at Actionaid and co-author of its "Meals per Gallon" report, said: "Jatropha is a real gold-rush crop, and the same amount of common sense that applies in a gold rush has been applied to the jatropha rush.

"Jatropha was the subject of an explosion of fabulous propaganda. But this was an untried crop at commercial levels and the many thousands of marginal farmers who have gone into production have been experimented on with disastrous results. They are simply not getting the income they were promised and now cannot afford food for their families," she said.

A native of central America, Jatropha curcus was brought to Europe in the 16th century and subsequently spread across Africa and Asia. Until recently, its few uses included a malaria treatment and an indigestion remedy.

But despite jatropha's much-lauded ability to grow where food crops cannot flourish, campaigners say there is evidence that commercially viable yields can only be obtained in fertile soil.

In India, forecasted annual yields of three to five tonnes of seeds per hectare have been scaled back to 1.8 to two tonnes. The Overseas Development Institute, a leading international development think-tank, has stated that "as the mainstay of people's livelihoods, jatropha looks distinctly marginal".

ActionAid said its researchers found repeated cases of farmers being left with jatropha crops they could not sell and land previously used to grow food crops being taken over by sub-contractors who then employed locals on wages that could not compete with rises in the price of foodstuffs partially caused by biofuel production.

Raju Sona, a farmer in north-east India who gave up land that usually produces vegetables to grow jatropha, said: "No one will buy jatropha. People said if you have a plantation then surely you have a good market. But we didn't see such a market. I threw the seeds away."

A number of British companies are continuing to market jatropha as a "highly ethical and green" investment. One fund offers investors three packages for prices ranging from £7,500 to £15,600 in a brochure entitled "Money really does grow on trees". That company says it has funded the planting of 32 million jatropha shrubs worldwide through a London-based provider called Carbon Credited Farming (CCF) Plc.

Jeff Reeves, head of global operations for CCF, which estimates it will have 300 million jatropha shrubs planted on 120,000 acres worldwide by the end of 2010, admitted that there had been problems establishing the crop.

He told The Ecologist magazine: "In many cases it is government policy and people that are to blame, rather than jatropha itself. Well-managed, jatropha ... can work. But there have been countries where poor management has meant this is not the case."

D1 Oils, a London-based biofuels company which has invested heavily in jatropha, said insisted it was too early to write off the crop as a long-term biofuel source. But its former co-investor, BP, disagreed. A spokesman said: "As other [renewable fuel] technologies came up, we looked again at whether jatropha was going to be the best biofuel source that could be scaled up. There were problems with it. We have decided to look elsewhere."

* Some of this research appeared in the Ecologist

jatropha麻风树面临的问题
 转自 中国科学院青岛生物能源与过程研究所
　　麻风树面临的问题 油料作物麻风树经常被吹捧为可以在贫瘠的土地上种植，并且需要很少投入的生物柴油作物。然而分析家们警告说：这种正在研究的生物燃料作物目前面临着3个主要的问题：产量不稳定；种籽有毒性，处理的时候要很小心；果实的收获需要大量劳动力。麻风树一直是一种野生植物，不像现在市场上的其它主要油料作物一样，没有经过农艺栽培研究，生物技术改良及商业研究这一系列的过程。但是，这些研究正随着生物技术公司的投资而迅速的增长。
  油料作物麻风树经常被吹捧为可以在贫瘠的土地上种植，并且需要很少投入的生物柴油作物。然而分析家们警告说：这种正在研究的生物燃料作物目前面临着3个主要的问题：产量不稳定；种籽有毒性，处理的时候要很小心；果实的收获需要大量劳动力。

    麻风树一直是一种野生植物，不像现在市场上的其它主要油料作物一样，没有经过农艺栽培研究，生物技术改良及商业研究这一系列的过程。但是，这些研究正随着生物技术公司的投资而迅速的增长。

    许多国家，像中国和印度都对这种多年生的灌木很感兴趣，因为它对土质要求低，不会占用耕地。一些实验表明，在一些大的农场，麻风树能和作物混合种植，前期投资很少，肥料灌溉要求低，并且还没有什么针对于麻风树的害虫或者病毒。

　劳动密集

　然而，在油料油脂会议上，棕榈油持续发展路线图的顾问M.R.Chandran提出：麻风树的每个果实成熟的时间都不一样，因此需要分多次采摘，并且必须要用人工采摘，因此需要很多劳动力。

　早些的一个关于不同能源系统的劳动力需求报告中，Biopact也曾提出，麻风树需要很多的劳动力，是要依靠特别廉价的劳动力来取得经济学效益的。密集型劳动力需求可能是一项优势，这意味着能够创造更多的就业机会。但是如果想要在获得社会的认可，生产体系中的人员工资必须要随着工作时间的延长而提高，如果像在奴隶社会中那样，劳动力成本不计算在内的话，生物燃料产业会很快在社会中消失的。简单的说，在劳动密集度和以增加劳动力来增加收入之间必须有一个平衡。像棕榈油，也是要人工采摘，但是每个工时收获的油脂(能量)却要多的多，依然会创造很多的工作机会，这就是一个很好的平衡。

　另外，经济的能量系统的很本质的一点就是，以尽可能少的人员投入生产尽可能多的能量，麻风树显然在这一点上不符合要求。

　毒性

　麻风树的第二大难题就是它的果实和叶子都是有毒的。在许多发展中国家，这些有毒物质已经被应用在传统医学中，他们用麻风树的提取物xxxx和许多小伤口。在西非的许多地方，用麻风树围在农田的四周当作篱笆，挡住一些毁坏庄稼的动物，这些动物会很自然的离得这种有毒植物远远的。但是当麻风树作为生物燃料作物大量种植的时候，他的毒性对那些采摘的人来说是非常危险的

　研究者必须弄清楚麻风树的毒性对采摘果实和种植数木的人的毒性有多大。有一个工程师对加工后的油和脂肪的毒性后得出结论说，麻风树会产生有毒气体，因此采摘时需要特殊的工具。然而就是同一位工程师说他对麻风树的种植持乐观态度，希望能在中国云南建立世界上{zd0}的麻风树种植基地。

　收获过程长
　{zh1}，麻风树还xx没有进行过高产等品种的生物技术的改良，如果想要能够提高它的产量等以使得种植能够更经济可行至少需要5年的时间。麻风树每公顷能收获油料大约2吨，年度之间差别也很大。棕榈油在进行了多年的研究改良之后油料的产量能是麻风树的三倍多。

　总之，麻风树作为一种油料作物来种植目前还存在许多问题，投资者不能盲目相信目前关于麻风树所做的宣传。但是在未来的几年中，这些问题应该也都能够解决。根据经验来讲，经典的育种技术一般会使野生植物的产量提高一倍。关于毒性问题，一些研究人员正研究将其转化成一种优势——将这些毒性物质应用在药学研究中，在麻风树的种籽处理过程中做一些简单的技术投资，使得他们在加工过程中将这些对身体有害的毒性物质去掉。关于劳动力的问题依然存在，但是目前有几家机构正在对麻风树进行机械采摘的研究，不知道这些研究能不能用于生产，因为麻风树的果实是分别成熟的，没有一个明确的成熟期。