Advocates for Sustainable Development (Philippines) Foundation

Jatropha: What the public should know

Vin Lava — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:04:34 -0700

JATROPHA CURCAS: WHAT THE PUBLIC SHOULD KNOW
by Ted Mendoza , Oscar Zamora, Joven Lales
Faculty of Crop Science, College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines at Los Banos
tcm_uplb77@yahoo.com

In the Philippines, agriculture is experiencing renewed popularity because of crops that are being considered as sources of renewable energy in response to the spiraling prices of non-renewable fossil fuels. In one recent press release, and we quote “The Government has launched a novel approach in reducing the nation's dependence on imported fossil fuels, like crude oil, by tapping vast tracts of heretofore unproductive idle public and private lands (mostly denuded mountains and forests) for large-scale bio-fuel crop cultivation. The initiative mandates the propagation and the commercial cultivation of the bio-fuel crop Jatropha curcas L. or Tuba-Tuba, a drought resistant small tree that yields seeds, which contains a high concentration of oil that can substitute for petrol-based diesel.”

Current thinking in government says that in addition to reducing the nation's dependence on imported petroleum and other fossil fuels, massive planting of Jatropha will have a huge employment generation and job creation impact in the rural areas where poverty or unemployment is high, since crop establishment/care (first to second year) and harvesting of fruits of Jatropha is labor-intensive. Furthermore, it will have vast economic multiplier effects in the rural areas as it will mean high resource inflows. As an agribusiness venture, planting Jatropha will require mills to be constructed where the oil will be processed. Transporting the harvested fruits from the farms to the mills will need roads and bridges to be constructed and hauling trucks to be procured. It may signal the start of economic upliftment of the people in areas where it will be planted. Hence, the claim, “a novel approach in reducing the nation's dependence on imported fossil fuels, like crude oil,” for its economic contribution and possible impacts on rural development.

Let us examine these government claims. As agriculturists, with all these pronouncements being made, we cannot remain silent when misleading information is being peddled as facts. We are compelled to present our views regarding this issue so that the public will not be misled and investors misguided. Keeping silent is a form of indirect participation, and a disservice to the public who deserve to know the simple truths about it.

Will planting Jatropha provide the financial benefits it is said to promise, particularly to the farmers who will be growing it? With this question in mind, we studied Jatropha. In our paper, published in the Philippine Journal of Crop Science Vol. 32 No 1, entitled, "Towards Making Jatropha curcas (Tubang bakod) a Viable Source of Biodiesel in the Philippines", we found out that…….

1 ) Jatropha becomes a viable source of biodiesel at PhP40 per liter price of crude oil with a high fruit yield of 36,000 kg /ha, high rates of oil extraction (34% and 38%) and if by-products are included and they provide 50% additional income from the oil revenue. The built-in assumption is that the price of Jatropha seeds corresponds to the diesel oil price. But the question is “Could this yield of 36,000 kg/ha and high oil content (34% and 38%) of Jatropha be achieved under Philippine conditions?” This question can only be definitively answered at some future time since we do not have any plantations which are at the optimum fruiting age (5 years after planting) and no Jatropha cultivar is grown in the Philippines that yields 34 % oil. The current laboratory oil extraction is in the range of 28-32 %.

2) At low yield levels of 12,000 kg per hectare, it will become profitable for farmers growing it if the current diesel oil prices increases to about PhP140 per liter of crude oil at 30% rate of oil extraction with revenues from the oil alone. This implies that the buying price of Jatropha seeds at the farm level is PhP4 per kg. The substrate costs shall be P42/.30 = P141/L of biodiesel. The estimates exclude processing and marketing costs. Current estimates put processing costs at PhP12 per liter. At this level, the price of biodiesel from Jatropha becomes PhP153 per liter. Will the oil price increase to more than PhP153 per liter? Definitely, some time in the future it will, but at this time it might be best to be prepared to use animal drawn vehicles, bicycles, or to simply walk! Jatropha seed yields are inherently low (as explained below) which partly explains the low revenues. This low yield trait of the crop suggests that more research must be done to further increase its seed yield and to be able to find ways on how to maximize total farm yield and by-products.

However, will the results of these experiments be realized anytime soon? For a perennial crop that gives optimum fruiting after 5 years, this means that hybridization and selection for the best yields would require a minimum 35 years (a 7-year cycle of selection x 5 years = 35 years). Genetic improvements of the crop to improve its overall trait as an energy crop should have been done long ago! But this all is water under the bridge for now. We can not hurry up nature!

There is more information that the public should know and understand, and they are as follows:

1) The long waiting period as the crop reaches optimum fruiting (5 years after planting ) plus the low seed yield of Jatropha requires multiple cropping schemes or diverse cropping involving short maturing crops and high value fruit and timber trees to increase the total farm yield and as a risk-minimizing farm strategy.

Are the public and private agencies promoting the massive planting of Jatropha putting equal emphasis on promoting multiple cropping? We support diverse cropping but we should point out that Jatropha is a sun-loving crop. While it grows under shade, photosynthesis (growth and yield) will be affected proportionally to the degree of shading. It should be expected that Jatropha yield per tree will also decrease under multiple cropping conditions due to the reduction in available space and sunlight. But it is logical for the farmers to adopt multiple cropping. If something happens to the Jatropha crop and if the price does not improve over time, the farmers will have some crops to fall back on. But even with this age-old practice of multiple cropping, we do not know that much about it with regards to Jatropha. Jatropha produces a toxic substance called curcin. Will this substance not have allelopathic effects on its companion crops? The planting of Jatropha was banned in Northern Australia due to this toxin. The Australians fear that their cattle will forage on Jatropha during the dry months and that it may become a weed later on.

2.) A massive campaign to encourage Jatropha planting is being waged in the Philippines. Many people are being enticed to plant Jatropha. 1 million hectares have been targeted for planting. But construction of processing plants has not started yet and it will take some time to set up the processing system.

It should be pointed out that 3 or 5 years after planting Jatropha is too short a time to start the construction of processing plants. Will the processing plants be ready by the time the Jatropha crop is harvestable? Furthermore it is necessary that the technologies to optimize the trans-esterification of raw oil into biodiesel, and the processing of by-products (press cake and/or glycerol) into high-priced products be acquired as soon as possible. Will these technologies be ready in 3 or 5 years’ time? This is one of the concerns aired by those who were earlier enticed to plant Jatropha and we quote, “Planting Jatropha without knowing all the facts can be a very painful and costly experience. Knowing the pitfalls can help make planting more worthwhile and successful. While big, well-funded corporations can plant Jatropha on a massive scale, small farm owners like the great majority of Filipino farmers must be careful. Wealthy companies generally know what they are doing. They plant on huge tracts of idle land that are leased to them at a minimal cost by the government or other entities and individuals. And if their yields do not perform according to expectations, their executives and shareholders will not starve. Ordinary farmers have to buy planting materials from suppliers who promise to by their produce -- assuming there will be a harvest. These companies are speculating on a potentially valuable product, biofuel, in the future -- but they are doing so using other people's money, time, and effort. Speculating is good but only if you know the odds.” For those who are planning to plant Jatropha, clearly there are still many unsettled questions.

3 )Tuba-Tuba planting is primarily aimed at making all idle public and private lands productive, particularly denuded mountains and forests which are unfit for food crop cultivation; and produce in commercial volume, a renewable and environment-friendly biofuel, thus alleviating poverty in the countryside and addressing current ecological concerns .

This is a very inviting statement coming from Jatropha proponents. We should point out the following points:

First point, Jatropha can grow in marginal soils but growth and yield will also be slow and marginal or low. There is a saying “you can not get something from nothing” and this applies to agriculture too.

Second point, for agriculturists, there is no land that is unfit for food crop cultivation. Where Jatropha grows, mangoes, cashew, siniguelas, duhat, jackfruit, bignay and many other tropical fruits will grow. Moreover, cassava, sweet potato, and many legumes will also grow.

Third point, while it can survive dry weather by shedding off leaves as an adaptive measure to avoid dying due to excessive loss of water; when this happens, there is no growth and no fruit set. It will resume growth once the soil is moist again.

Fourth point, Jatropha grows well under a favorable growing environment - high soil fertility, adequate moisture and weed management during its early years of growth. But using such land will compete with land currently planted to food security crops - a subject Jatropha proponents try to avoid. What are the latest observations? If Jatropha plants are well-fertilized and irrigated, they grow well but they merely become vegetative. This means that they do not yield the quantity of fruits that we are led to expect!

4) There is currently a big push to grow Jatropha using imported seeds as they are said to be high yielding.

Importing the high yielding traits may also mean the importation of "unknown" bad traits of the plant like pest susceptibility. Using imported seeds should be done with utmost care. A frightening scenario would be to plant them on large tracts of land, only to find out subsequently that the crop is susceptible to a viral or fungal disease. Moreover, Jatropha might just simply serve as source of inoculum, thus infecting even the indigenized cultivars in the country.

5) The main prospects being claimed about Jatropha curcas is that it could yield as much as 5-7 tonnes seeds per ha per year.

As pointed out earlier, there are no standing crops to validate this claim. We have tried to validate this using known scientific procedures. We have done so by transforming the sugar equivalence of oil as illustrated below:

@ 30% oil x 5 tonnes x 3.03 gram glucose equivalence of oil in seed (3.03. x 1.5) = 4.54 tonnes
@ 2.42 gram glucose equivalence of seed coat and the press cake = 8.48 tonnes (2.8 x 3.5)
TOTAL = 13.02 tonnes/ha (4.54 + 8.48)

It appears that there is a remote possibility that a Jatropha crop would give such a seed yield as the sugar equivalence is so high, being estimated at 13.02 MT/Ha. Sugarcane, the highest yielding energy crop which produces sugar via the C4 pathway of photosynthesis only gives a maximum of 10 tonnes of sugar/ha in the Philippines.

Jathropha fixes carbon dioxide via the C3 path way. And if it is planted in marginal soils to avoid the concerns that it will compete with food crops production, simple logic indicates that: marginal soils will produce marginal yields as pointed out earlier.

5) A private company is buying Jatropha seeds at PhP4 per kilo. Is this the right buying price? One Jatropha planter-enthusiast inquires.

Before answering the question, it is important to note that the PhilForest pricing scheme (TUBA-TUBA FOR OIL, Ed Velasco, 09-October-2006 Philippine Graphic Magazine) of purchasing 1 kg of dried Jatropha seeds at 15% of the prevailing diesel pump prices or 0.15 * PhP34 per liter = P5.10 per kg with PhP34 being the current price per liter of diesel oil. Before buying the produce, the dried Jatropha seeds should contain less than 10% of the moisture level set by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). If seeds containing more than 10% moisture will be processed, the diesel will be less effective and might cause engine problems.

Jatropha seed price of PhP4 per kg? What does this price mean? Consider the following simple estimates:

>>: 1kg seed = 5.1 kg dried fruit or 9.7 kg fresh (yellow fruit) = 7.41 /kg average weight of fruits.
>>On the average, 1 kg seed @ PhP4 per kg = PhP0.54 per kg of fruit.

What does this figure imply? Harvesting the fruits in the field, hauling, drying them, and then dehulling the fruits to get the seeds will only fetch a price of PhP0.54 /kg fruit. Will there be people in the rural areas who would be willing to harvest and extract the seeds and be paid a PhP0.54 per kg of fruit? This is adding insult to injury. It is shameful way of making the poor poorer in the guise of developing the country’s energy security.

6) To entice people into Jatropha planting, a PhP50,000 per hectare income is being promised. A promised financial bounty or simply deceit?

Our simple estimates revealed the following: If the crop would yield, say 1,500 kg-seeds per hectare per year, farm revenues would be @ PhP4-5 per kg = PhP6,000 per hectare to PhP7,500/hectare. Granting without accepting, the yield would be 5 tonnes per hectare, then the gross income would be PhP4 per kg x 5,000 kg per hectare = PhP20,000/ha or at PhP5 per kg x 5,000 = P25,000/ha.

Jatropha boosters have reported that it costs about PhP50,000 per hectare to establish and maintain the crop for 2 years. The figures they are citing do not simply match.

It was claimed that PhP50,000 per hectare is needed to establish and maintain the crop for the first 2 years. The seedling cost alone is already PhP37,500 at PhP15 per piece at a planting density of 2,500 plants per hectare. And seed yield claims are 5-7.5 tonnes per hectare. We have pointed out earlier that 5 tonnes per hectare is not a realizable yield. It therefore becomes somewhat difficult to imagine a PhP50,000 per hectare income.

We are reminded of the Ponzi scam! As of this date, there are groups who are thinking about multi-level marketing and we quote… Can we make use of Jatropha curcas as a product for Multi-Level marketing para bumilis ang pagtatanim at benta (to expedite planting and selling)? I am researching a company in the Philippines engaged in multi-level marketing of agricultural products and GOOD HARVEST in Bataan sells stocks for grafted mango tree for a PhP30,000 investment. All we need is a manufacturer of Jatropha Methyl Esther (JME) to sell the seeds to. So it is like a big Multi Level Marketing cooperative. If we find the right system for this, I think this will be successful. This is a crazy idea, but this will be good for the growers who already have planted Jatropha Curcas plants and are now fruiting. What does this thinking reveal?

7) Jatropha oil has high saponification value, making it as an excellent substrate for soap-making. Two products may then be obtained from Jatropha: soap and biodiesel.

This could be a positive attribute of Jatropha. Can we teach the farmers to produce soap from Jatropha in case its buying price at the farm gate will not be profitable for them?

These are but a few of the simple truths that we think the public should know about Jatropha. We hope this short article clarifies some of the burning issues about Jatropha.

Ted Mendoza , Oscar Zamora, Joven Lales
Faculty of Crop Science, College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines at Los Banos
tcm_uplb77@yahoo.com
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Brief Information about Jatropha
Botanical description. Locally known as tuba-tuba, tubang bakod (Tagalog), galumbang (Pampanga), Jatropha curcas belongs to the family Euphorbiaceae, subfamily Crotonoideae and tribe Jatropheae. There are approximately 175 species under the genus Jatropha and, there are least 4 important species, namely: J. curcas, J. gosstifolia, J. podarica, and J. multifada. Jatropha is a succulent shrub. Plants do not grow very tall (only up to 20 ft). They have spreading branches and stubby twigs, with milky and yellowish exudates. Leaves are deciduous, alternate but apically crowded, ovate, acute to acuminate, basally cordate, 3-5 lobed in outline, 6-40 cm long and 6-35 cm broad. Mature trees bear male and female flowers. They bear several flowers which are greenish cymes, yellowish and bell shaped. Plants from this genus natively occur in Africa; Jatropha spread as a valuable ridge plant to Africa and Asia through the Portuguese traders. It is widely grown in Tamil Nadu India, growing as weeds in Brazil, Fiji, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, El Salvador and is commonly planted in fence lines in the Philippines, hence the name tubang bakod (cane fence).

Jatropha curcas grows well under subtropical and tropical climates. The plant is known to tolerate a wide range of rainfall (48 cm to 238 cm, mean of 143 cm) annually, grows in wide range of temperature (18-28.5°C, mean of 25.2). It thrives in any soil type – sandy, gravelly, saline soils – if well-drained. It needs full sun. It is easily propagated either by seeds or stem cuttings, fast-growing, and adapted to marginal soils with low nutrient contents. Seedlings (3-4 month old) can be planted with the following distances: square planting: 2m x 2m (2,500 plants/ha) or 2m x 3m (1,666 plants/ha). Best time for planting coincides with the start of the rainy season. Care of plants is simple as it involves only ring weeding during the first year, under brushing in later years to control vines and other dominant/highly competitive weeds. Fertilizer application depends on the soil fertility and the farmers’ capacity to buy. When established, it needs minimal attention or management. No insect pests are known to attack the crop and it is not palatable to ruminants (cattle or sheep, goat), making it a desirable plant for the fence lines.

Plants start to bear fruits within two years after planting but reaches maximum productivity after 5 years. Fruits are harvested at yellow stage, each fruit containing 3-4 black seeds 2 cm long and 1 cm thick. Dry seed is about 15% of fresh weight of fruits. Dry seed is 32% meal, 30-38% crude oil, 30-38% seed coat (taken from various literatures).
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Coordinator HUB

NOBODY WANTS TO TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS

Vin Lava — Tue, 22 May 2007 23:11:23 -0700

NOBODY WANTS TO TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS

On March 28, less than two months ago, when Bush proclaimed his diabolical idea of producing fuel from food, after a meeting with the most important U.S. automobile manufacturers, I wrote my first reflection.

The head of the empire was bragging that the United States was now the first world producer of ethanol, using corn as raw material. Hundreds of factories were being built or enlarged in the United States just for that purpose.

During those days, the industrialized and rich nations were already toying with the same idea of using all kinds of cereals and oil seeds, including sunflower and soy which are excellent sources of proteins and oils. That’s why I chose to title that reflection: “More than 3 billion people in the world are being condemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst.”

The dangers for the environment and for the human species were a topic that I had been meditating on for years. What I never imagined was the imminence of the danger. We as yet were not aware of the new scientific information about the celerity of climatic changes and their immediate consequences.

On April 3, after Bush’s visit to Brazil, I wrote my reflections about “The internationalization of genocide.”

At the same time, I warned that the deadly and sophisticated weapons that were being produced in the United States and in other countries could annihilate the life of the human species in a matter of days.

To give humanity a respite and an opportunity to science and to the dubious good sense of the decision-makers, it is not necessary to take food away from two-thirds of the inhabitants of the planet.

We have supplied information about the savings that could be made simply by replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones, using approximate calculations. They are numbers followed by 11 and 12 zeros. The first corresponds to hundreds of billions of dollars saved in fuel each year, and the second to trillions of dollars in necessary investments to produce that electricity by merely changing light bulbs, meaning less than 10 percent of the total expenses and a considerable saving of time.

With complete clarity, we have expressed that CO2 emissions, besides other pollutant gases, have been leading us quickly towards a rapid and inexorable climatic change.

It was not easy to deal with these topics because of their dramatic and almost fatal content.

The fourth reflection was titled: “It is imperative to immediately have an energy revolution.” Proof of the waste of energy in the United States and of the inequality of its distribution in the world is that in the year 2005, there were less than 15 automobiles for each thousand people in China; there were 514 in Europe and 940 in the United States.

The last of these countries, one of the richest territories in hydrocarbons, today suffers from a large deficit of oil and gas. According to Bush, these fuels must be extracted from foods, which are needed for the more and more hungry bellies of the poor of this Earth.

On May Day 2006, I ended my speech to the people with the following words:

“If the efforts being made by Cuba today were imitated by all the other countries in the world, the following would happen:

“1st The proved and potential hydrocarbon reserves would last twice as long.

“2nd The pollution unleashed on the environment by these hydrocarbons would be halved.

“3rd The world economy would have a break, since the enormous volume of transportation means and electrical appliances should be recycled.

“4th A fifteen-year moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants could be declared.”

Changing light bulbs was the first thing we did in Cuba, and we have cooperated with various Caribbean nations to do the same. In Venezuela, the government has replaced 53 million incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent in more than 95% of the homes receiving electrical power. All the other measures to save energy are being resolutely carried out.

Everything I am saying has been proven.

Why is it that we just hear rumors without the leadership of industrialized countries openly committing to an energy revolution, which implies changes in concepts and hopes about growth and consumerism that have contaminated quite a few poor nations?

Could it be that there is some other way of confronting the extremely serious dangers threatening us all?

Nobody wants to take the bull by the horns.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 22, 2007
5: 10 pm

Advocates for Sustainable Development (Philippines) Foundation

THE ENGLISH SUBMARINE

Vin Lava — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:14:29 -0700

Note: I am posting this because it strikes me as a ridiculous expense for the British taxpayer. The money spent on this could be used to deliver better social services to their citizens.

THE ENGLISH SUBMARINE

The press dispatches bring the news; it belongs to the Astute Class, the first of its kind to be constructed in Great Britain in more than two decades.

“A nuclear reactor will allow it to navigate without refuelling during its 25 year of service. Since it makes its own oxygen and drinking water, it can circumnavigate the globe without needing to surface,” was the statement to the BBC by Nigel Ward, head of the shipyards.

“It’s a mean looking beast”, says another.

“Looming above us is a construction shed 12 storeys high. Within it are 3 nuclear-powered submarines at different stages of construction,” assures yet another.

Someone says that “it can observe the movements of cruisers in New York Harbor right from the English Channel, drawing close to the coast without being detected and listen to conversations on cell phones”. “In addition, it can transport special troops in mini-subs that, at the same time, will be able to fire lethal Tomahawk missiles for distances of 1,400 miles", a fourth person declares.

El Mercurio, the Chilean newspaper, emphatically spreads the news.

The UK Royal Navy declares that it will be one of the most advanced in the world. The first of them will be launched on June 8 and will go into service in January of 2009.

It can transport up to 38 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish torpedoes, capable of destroying a large warship. It will possess a permanent crew of 98 sailors who will even be able to watch movies on giant plasma screens.

The new Astute will carry the latest generation of Block 4 Tomahawk torpedoes which can be reprogrammed in flight. It will be the first one not having a system of conventional periscopes and, instead, will be using fibre optics, infrared waves and thermal imaging.

“BAE Systems, the armaments manufacturer, will build two other submarines of the same class,” AP reported. The total cost of the three submarines, according to calculations that will certainly be below the mark, is 7.5 billion dollars.

What a feat for the British! The intelligent and tenacious people of that nation will surely not feel any sense of pride. What is most amazing is that with such an amount of money, 75 thousand doctors could be trained to care for 150 million people, assuming that the cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the United States. You could build 3 thousand polyclinics, outfitted with sophisticated equipment, ten times what our country possesses.

Cuba is currently training thousands of young people from other countries as medical doctors.

In any remote African village, a Cuban doctor can impart medical knowledge to any youth from the village or from the surrounding municipality who has the equivalent of a grade twelve education, using videos and computers energized by a small solar panel; the youth does not even have to leave his hometown, nor does he need to be contaminated with the consumer habits of a large city.

The important thing is the patients who are suffering from malaria or any other of the typical and unmistakable diseases that the student will be seeing together the doctor.

The method has been tested with surprising results. The knowledge and practical experience accumulated for years have no possible comparison.

The non-lucrative practice of medicine is capable of winning over all noble hearts.

Since the beginning of the Revolution, Cuba has been engaged in training doctors, teachers and other professionals; with a population of less than 12 million inhabitants, today we have more Comprehensive General Medicine specialists than all the doctors in sub-Saharan Africa where the population exceeds 700 million people.

We must bow our heads in awe after reading the news about the English submarine. It teaches us, among other things, about the sophisticated weapons that are needed to maintain the untenable order developed by the United States imperial system.

We cannot forget that for centuries, and until recently, England was called the Queen of the Seas. Today, what remains of that privileged position is merely a fraction of the hegemonic power of her ally and leader, the United States.

Churchill said: Sink the Bismarck! Today Blair says: Sink whatever remains of Great Britain’s prestige!

For that purpose, or for the holocaust of the species, is what his “marvellous submarine” will be good for.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 21, 2007
5:00 p.m.

Advocates for Sustainable Development (Philippines) Foundation

The Demand - Led Promotion of Organic Farming

Vin Lava — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:41:25 -0700

The Demand - Led Promotion of Organic Farming

By Teodoro C. Mendoza

For the more than two decades that ecological agriculture, particularly organic farming, has been promoted in the country, the focus has been on the farmers and producers. The existing rationale is that farmers are the ones who are mainly involved in deciding what crop species to grow, when to plant, what inputs to apply - the over-all cultural management practices to use from land preparation and planting to harvesting. Because of this, it becomes logical to approach them and convince them to change or shift their production systems from their dependence and heavy use of agrochemicals to minimal or even zero use of agrochemicals - chemical fertilizers and pesticides - and to adopt farm practices that rebuild the soil and lead to balanced agroecosystems. At first glance, there appears be nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach. But a closer and deeper look into this rationale shows that it might not be fair, just, realistic, or practical.

It is not fair or just because in the first place, it was not the farmers per se who started the process of shifting what was previously agrochemical-free agriculture to an agrochemical-intensive agriculture system. It was the techno-economic-political system of the past that transformed the agricultural system.

Recalling the scenario pictured by Malthus in late 18th century when population was growing exponentially and food production increasing arithmetically, clearly foresaw a grim food deficit situation in the foreseeable future at that time. The technological advances brought about by the Industrial Revolution produced goods, such as war paraphernalia and chemicals, which could not readily be unloaded after the 2nd World War which resulted in the need for new markets.

What could sustain industrial progress under a "peaceful" global environment? Supplying the food needs of the emerging mass markets of the exponentially rising world population met the challenges of the new paradigm. It should be pointed out that agrochemical intensive agricultural system was, and still is, pursued both by the capitalist and socialist north. This is pointed out to indicate that agrochemical-intensive agriculture is ideologically-neutral.

The success achieved by the industrial economies of the North in adopting highly agrochemical intensive agriculture required a vigorous "transfer of technology" scheme for the South. First, this supported the continuous expansion of the North’s markets for their industrial products like agrochemicals for crops, vaccines, antibiotics, and feed supply surpluses for livestock. Second, to eliminate any political or ideological underpinnings, there was really a need to increase agricultural productivity in the South due mainly to the rapidly increasing population after the 2nd World War which, incidentally, continues to increase unabated up to this time, particularly in the Philippines. The North stabilized their population early in the 20th century (France did it about 1900, US about the 1940s). Third, many countries in the South were former colonies of the industrial North. While these countries supposedly gained political independence from their previous colonial masters, political leaders of these newly-liberated countries still needed the North’s material and technical support to address the mounting pressure of food shortages caused by their burgeoning populations.

Dubbed "The Green Revolution", it was mainly focused in rice or food staples. Soon, this strategy was expanded to all crops and livestock including aquaculture. Agricultural crop/livestock yield increased, averting the Malthusian forecast of a food crisis.

This agrochemical dependent agriculture was also promoted as "Modern Agriculture". The promotion of this scheme had many implications. If a farmer was not using agrochemical inputs together with the seeds and the package of technologies associated with the Green Revolution, he or she was labeled traditional or conservative. As the yields were generally lower, it was associated with poverty. Very few farmers wanted to remain poor or be labeled as conservative. Being traditional or conservative was also associated with being poor.

In the Philippines, it must be remembered that The Green Revolution was heavily promoted during the early years of President Ferdinand Marcos’ Martial Law. In the much-heralded "Masagana 99" program, and in government training and credit programs as well, farmers were organized into "Samahang Nayon" or Village Associations which expediently supported and facilitated the spread of this “modern” agricultural technology. This was implemented mainly through loans provided by the World Bank and other international financing agencies which were then used by governments to construct irrigation systems, buy large farm machinery, and extend loans to the farmers to enable them to buy agrochemicals and small farm machinery. This was also the time of the "Debt for Development" program of Robert McNamara, the Director General of World Bank then. This was also the time when the Bank had lots of surplus funds due to the unprecedented amount of money in the hands of the oil industry, in addition to other excess funds coming from other sources in the industrial North.

Not only were farmers labeled as traditional or conservative, farmers also ran the risk of being portrayed as anti-government or subversive elements if the government-sponsored food production were not adopted. Hence, the easy way out of such a life-threatening condition was for farmers to simply adopt the Green Revolution practices together with the amenities of easy credit which, by the way, could undergo 3-4 renewals if farmers failed to pay in case of crop failures brought about by plant diseases or calamities such as floods and typhoons.

The rest is history. Today, many know the drawbacks of the so-called Modern Agricultural Model, which is mainly characterized by the use of high yielding varieties (open-pollinated or hybrids, transgenics or GMO's), and the heavy use of agrochemical inputs. It is also common knowledge that our soils are now degraded, acidic, eroded, saline in some areas, and with a low supply of nutrients for crop uptake, requiring fertilizer to be applied in larger and larger amounts in order to get high yields. Then there is also the imbalance between pest populations and their predators, making pesticide use by farmers necessary, which in turn, makes them mix pesticide cocktails to increase toxicity. Today, the presence of pesticide residues in food, in the food chain, and in the ecosystem is well-known. Hazardous effects of pesticides on human health, including their effects on the endocrine systems in the form of sex reversals are now well documented. Cancer, a rare disease during pre-modern agriculture, is now a dominant illness. The incidence of breast and prostate cancer has increased phenomenally.

The campaign now is to go back to farmers and convince them to adopt ecologically sound and organic-chemical-free methods of cultivation.
What should comprise the main campaign strategy?

• Inform and train farmers on the ill-effects (environment-health-financial) of modern agro-chemical intensive agriculture.

• Organize farmers and form cooperatives to produce "organics" and
assist farmers in marketing their organic produce. NGOs and private individuals may be able to provide soft loans to and other incentives to the farmers-converts.

Two decades after the “Green Revolution” how many Organic Agriculture (OA) converts does the Philippines have? The Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development, Inc. (MASIPAG), a Philippine NGO composed of farmers, scientists, and peoples’ organizations, estimates that there are approximately 30,000 Filipino organic farmers (http://www.masipag.org/news_india.htm). The CIA Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rp.html#Econ) estimates that 36% of the approximately 35,790,000-strong Filipino labor force are in the agricultural sector for a total of 12,884,400. Numerically, 30,000 looks like a lot, but proportionally their numbers are a miniscule 0.23% or 23 out of 10,000 farmers. Their numbers are not increasing though. The theory being advanced is that the promotion of OA must be focused on the supply-side of the supply and demand curve. There may be nothing wrong with this approach. But upon closer scrutiny, we have to ask ourselves what the weaknesses of this approach are:

1) Very few farmers are philosophers, poets, or environmentalists. By and large, farmers farm for livelihood, to generate income for their families, and to produce food. They adopt systems and practices that will enable them to achieve their goals in farming, or those that will lighten the burdens of farming, such as:

- The use of machines to facilitate land preparation, threshing, and milling

- The use of herbicides to control weeds

- The use of pesticides to eliminate, if not minimize, the risk of crop failure and possible yield reduction

Because of these factors, only a few (23 out of 10,000) have shifted to organic farming.

2) The shift from modern to organic chemical free agriculture is not mechanical. It is much more complex than it appears to be.

First, farmers are not a simple biological entity. They are thinking people who have emotions or feelings. It is not uncommon to hear farmers tell a farm extension worker, "You were the ones who propagated modern agriculture through the use of fertilizer and pesticides. Why are you telling us now to stop using them?" This comment simply reveals a deep-seated feeling among these farmers.

Second, farmers were not the one who started these agricultural systems. Now, that the effects of the system has already been recognized, why should the burden of change and the attendant risks be on them?

This leads to real and practical aspects of farming. Farmers are not as stupid as they are portrayed to be if they do not shift to OA. Soil fertility ranges from bad to worse in different places. How would they farm organically without encountering yield declines? A 15% to 20% decline in yields for rice in the first two croppings after shifting to OA methods of planting has been observed (http://www.masipag.org/news_india.htm). For a country with a food deficit like the Philippines, it would be nothing short of a catastrophe if the majority of farmers were to decide to go cold turkey and shift to OA overnight.

Should farmers be left alone or should they shoulder the greater burden of shifting to OA? They have families to feed, shelter, and clothe, and most have children who need to go to school.

A demand-led approach to the promotion of Organic Agriculture

What constitutes a demand-led approach to the promotion of organic agriculture? The Law of Supply and Demand can influence the mechanics of the implementation of OA adoption by many, if not all, Filipino farmers. The consumers comprise the demand side of the production-to-postproduction linkage. Farmers follow the economic logic in production which is, that which is demanded by the consumers will be that produced by the farmers. Following this logic if consumers demand chemical-free agricultural products, then farmers shall simply follow that signal. Demand in this case can be interpreted in a number of ways.

1) Consumers must be willing to support farmers in the production of chemical-free products

2) Consumers must be willing to pay a premium. Consumers’ willingness to support the farmers in the production of chemical-free products can be expressed in several ways.

a) Consumers can visit and help motivate farmers to grow crops and animals the organic way. Since organic production systems are different from the agrochemical dependent systems, consumers must also be familiar with the organic production system. Basic in organic production system is soil building or natural soil fertility restoring activity. How can a consumer-supported soil building be done? Let us first trace how natural soil fertility is lost.

a) Products consumed (crops and animals) represent off-farm losses of nutrients.

b) The production of crops and animals has a corresponding loss of nutrients through soil erosion, especially in sloping lands.

c) The use of agrochemicals has soil degrading effects like soil acidity build-up as a result of using acid-forming fertilizers.

d) Specific farming practices like burning crop and weed residues contribute to soil organic matter loss.

Listing the four (4) major causes of natural soil fertility losses leads us to the more complex task of avoiding soil fertility losses and devising measures to mitigate them. Let us leave this complex discussion for a while as it requires another paper to discuss it.

The soil aspects of organic production are complex to deal with but the pest aspects are equally, if not more complex, to deal with at present. Although the soil and pest aspects are interrelated as viewed in organic production systems, pest ecosystems must be well understood. Farmers’ overuse of pesticides is not simply because they fear for yield or quality loss.

Producing and harvesting pest-free crops is equally important. Consider pechay or Bok Choy production. In summer, pechay is sprayed daily (early in the morning) to preempt insect bites so that leaves are unblemished with holes and leaves do not form irregular sizes and shapes.

A demand-led OA requires that consumers be willing to buy agricultural products with irregular sizes or shapes, including those that have insect bites.

More difficult factors to address that compound pest damage arise from the production of off-season fruits and vegetables. Nature designs crop seasonality, but due to agrochemical and pesticide use, crops can now be grown the whole year round. Tomatoes can be grown during the wet season in elevated/high altitude areas. Insect and fungal infestations are prevented by spraying insecticides or fungicides. A farmer growing tomatoes during the wet season claimed that it was useless to grow tomatoes during the rainy season if they were not sprayed with chemicals regularly.

Mangoes can now be produced off-season by using a flower inducer. Producing mangoes during the rainy season from September to November is conducive to insect and fungal pest population build-up due to high moisture. To hasten maturity of the leaves, farmers spray chemicals before applying flower inducer. July and August are rainy months which are also characterized by the population build-up of pests and fungi that attack the flowers. To protect the flowers and small fruits later, pesticide spraying is a must in order for flowers to develop into fruit and small fruit into bigger fruits. The farmers invest in the chemicals to make the mangoes flower, and they continue to spend until harvest time to make their venture financially successful. If there are typhoons or heavy rains prior to harvesting these investments are wasted. The farmers are in a bind.

As the leaves are forced to mature, their photosynthesis functions are impaired. Chemicals are sprayed again to enhance photosynthesis so that the increasing demand for photosynthates of the growing fruits may be met. Meanwhile, consumers are more than willing to buy mangoes in October or November. Before there was such a thing as off-season production, they had to wait until April or May to buy mangoes.

Consumers who are willing to support OA production should understand crop seasonality so they are prepared to forego for them during the off-season. This also means that they must be willing to buy preserved fruits and vegetables.

Consumers must be willing to pay a premium price for organic products. This is a big issue for organic products. Consumers in the Third World countries already consider current food prices to be too high. Approximately 85% of the Philippine population lives on less than US$2.00 per day; and more than 51% of the rural population live below the subsistence threshold as defined by the World Bank (http://www.masipag.org/news_india.htm). The government’s average mandated minimum wage is PhP250 (US$6.00) per day. The current retail price of ordinary rice in the wet markets ranges from PhP18 to PhP24/kg (US$0.36 – US$0.48/kg). Supermarket retail prices of organic rice range from PhP35/kg (US$0.70/kg) for ordinary varieties to PhP45 (US$0.90/kg) for fancy varieties (red, black, glutinous or aromatic rice). The current high price of organic rice retards the growth in consumption and demand for organic rice.

Consumption of organic rice is thus limited to those who can really afford to pay – well-off cancer patients who are advised to eat organic products; those who have undergone heart surgery; and the few environmental and health conscious sectors of the society who can afford it.

The other issue is price. Why pay a high price? Or, is a higher price for organically grown products just and fair?

The premise is that consumers must be willing to pay a premium price as part of a demand-driven component of OA adoption by farmers.

There is a need to clarify what consumers are paying for. The consumers are simply paying for the market price of what they buy. The financial price that is paid does not truly reflect the true value of the product since all the costs of production are not included. The total costs should include (1) financial - the costs of purchased inputs - seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, fuel, machineries, cost of money, labor, storage, packaging, marketing, and distribution (2) ecological - soil quality deterioration due to the inputs and farming methods applied and all other environmental and ecological costs.

What is paid for is simply a small fraction of the total cost. It has been estimated that the true cost of a beef burger in the US can be about US$100 per piece if the ecological costs are counted (http://www.spirulinasource.com/earthfoodch7a.html). But it is sold only at US$2.00 – US$3.00 per piece by the food chains. What this means is that the current market price is so low because government subsidies and the ecological costs of raising beef are not included. It means that future generations will pay dearly for these unseen costs. Even now, we are already starting to pay the price as reflected in the rise of lifestyle-related illnesses and global warming.

The cost of growing crops and animals is grossly under-priced. But the financial costs of their mass production using industrial methods: specialized cropping or monocropping + mechanization reduce the unit financial cost of production considerably. It does appear that larger farmers/producers are earning as they obtain a higher financial profit margin due to industrialized farming. (A discussion on ecological tax should interest both environmentalists and OA advocates).

With pricing parity based on the true or total cost accounting (financial + ecological), marketing of organically grown products is an uphill climb. Conventionally grown products are under-priced or even incorrectly priced. Their price tags are way below actual costs if the true costs of production and a reasonable profit margin are included.

Because of this, the market price of OA products appear to be more expensive as they are generally priced 20-30% higher. Is this acceptable?

If the true price tags of conventionally grown crops and animals are to be considered, then OA products are sold at considerably lower price. But the general consuming public who are already financially hard-up will not understand this logic. What they would appreciate, considering their current shrinking purchasing power, is the financially low price of products that they buy in the market. (I might also be wrong in excessively underestimating the very same people who need to eat healthy food).

In effect, what is being presented is that the 20-30 % higher price of OA products is not really high or a premium price after all. Why?

OA grown vegetables have higher quality and higher nutritional value with more vitamins and lower water content. Thus, they keep longer (they do not wilt) even at ordinary room temperature; and they taste better, in fresh salads or in cooked form. OA-grown rice tastes better and stores longer. A common observation is that cooked OA rice does not spoil in 24 hours.

Eating OA-grown crops is consuming nutritional and medicinal food
OA-grown crops are medicinal food. More and more findings and testimonies indicate that organically grown crops heal cancer patients who have already received death sentences (6 months to 1 year) from the medical doctors treating them. The healing power or contribution to good health of OA food is still vaguely understood. What we do know about OA food is that they are rich in vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants which are useful as precursors in enzyme formation or activators of immune/repair systems inside the human body.
Patronizing OA-grown crops consumes nutritional and medicinal food at the same time. Everybody should put a premium (premium price is not correct here) on health because there is no price tag on one’s body. This explains why poor farmers sell their valuable land and possessions to send their sick family members to a hospital.

"Health Banking" is unusual. What is common is money banking. Consuming OA-grown healthy food is a sure and gradual way to health asset build-up and accumulation or health banking. Consider the health care bills - medicines, doctors’ fees, laboratory fees that accumulate once a person begins to suffer heart disease, hypertension, arthritis, gout, diabetes, or cancer, among others. These are known as "lifestyle diseases" which were mostly unheard of in the days of pre-modern agriculture. Consuming OA health foods offers the body built-in protection against impaired immune systems triggered by the bio-accumulation of pesticides and other agro-chemicals in the food chain that ultimately end up at the top of the food chain - in the human body.

An additional 20-30% in the market price of OA-grown crops is a drop in the bucket if the numerous interrelated benefits to human health and the cost to our planet’s ecosystem are considered. Imagine the lost productivity and income of an individual who is ill and the medical costs incurred in the prophylactic treatment of the illness. It is a rather lengthy process to audit the ecological costs - greenhouse gas emissions of manufacturing fertilizer, pesticides, and the machineries and fossil fuels involved in transport, hauling, processing/storage and repair costs - to the soil and our ecosystem brought about by the use of resource degrading inputs. But this must eventually be done if we want to arrive at the true value of the food we eat.

The point of this discussion is that the farmers will simply uphold economic dictum. Whatever consumers demand will be the products in a form and scale that farmers will produce. If the consumer is apathetic, indifferent, unaware, or unconcerned with they way food is grown and food is looked at as simply stuff to fill an empty stomach once the digestive enzymes signal hunger, the consumer will get what he or she wants – a full belly with minimal nutrition and health benefits.

Consumers must recognize the need for nutritional and medicinal foods and must be made conscious of the costs to our planet’s ecosystem brought about by Modern Agriculture. And this knowledge must then be translated into a demand that will lead to changes in the supply side thereby changing the agricultural production systems that 99.77% of our Filipino farmers currently adopt.

Teodoro C. Mendoza is a faculty member of The Crop Science Cluster, College of Agriculture, UP Los Banos. Email : tcm_uplb77@yahoo.com

Advocates for Sustainable Development (Philippines) Foundation

Global warming from a former petroleum geologist's viewpoint

Vin Lava — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 23:56:16 -0700

Global warming from a former petroleum geologist's viewpoint

Kelvin S. Rodolfo

To understand greenhouse warming from human-generated carbon dioxide
requires a proper geological grasp of two things: First, the photosynthesis-respiration cycle, the most important element of Earth's delicately balanced surface environment; second, the enormity of geological time over which the world’s petroleum accumulated, in contrast to the one and a half century during which we have burned half of it.

Photosynthesis transforms sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons containing stored chemical energy, with a ”byproduct” of free oxygen. The stored energy is released by respiration, whereby animals and fungi power their existence by "burning" the hydrocarbons with oxygen, releasing "waste" water and carbon dioxide, and thus completing the cycle.

The photosynthesis-respiration cycle is very efficient, but small Amounts of hydrocarbons escape respiration by being buried in swamp deposits or in oceanic sediments.

Deep burial of the swamps transforms the organic material into coal. When the oceanic hydrocarbons are buried to depths of about 2 to 5 kilometers, the elevated pressures and temperatures slowly cook them into oil and methane, which migrate upward, being of low density. The petroleum is trapped if it enters the pores in sands or limestones that are enclosed on the top and sides by impermeable rocks.

Given enough time, all coal and petroleum eventually must undergo one of two fates. Either they are buried so deeply that Earth’s internal heat rips the hydrocarbon molecules apart, or uplift and erosion of the carbon-bearing rocks releases the coal and petroleum back into the surface environment. The Canadian and Venezuelan tar sands are oil deposits exposed by erosion that have lost their volatile components.

Natural processes over the great lengths of geological time have achieved a rough balance between carbon storage and release, leaving the global environmental balance essentially undisturbed, leaving a quasi-steady-state amount of carbon stored in Earth’s crust.

Ignoring coal and methane to look only at oil, the best geological estimates are: since about 600 million years ago, when the oldest oil we use was formed, the Earth has stored only about two trillion barrels. On average, this is little more than 3,000 barrels annually.

The most prolific oil-generating period was the 20 million years or so of late Jurassic to mid Cretaceous time, from about 110 to 90 million years ago, when more than half of the world’s oil – including all in the Middle East – was stored. Even during that period, the Earth stored only about 50,000 barrels annually.

At present, Humanity burns about 29 billion barrels a year. That is what the Earth has stored, on average, over about nine million years.

In other words, the carbon dioxide that Nature took out of the atmosphere and tucked away as oil in rocks over nine million years, we return to the air in one year. Over the last one and a half centuries – the blink of an eye in geological terms – we have burned a trillion barrels of oil and have dumped its carbon dioxide waste back into the air.

Even if TWICE as much oil has accumulated in the Earth's crust as our best estimates - a totally unrealistic figure that not even the most wildly optimistic "cornucopians" claim, we would be pumping into the air in one year the carbon dioxide that nature had sequestered in the rocks for over four million years.

Comparable amounts of carbon dioxide are also pumped into the atmosphere by burning coal and methane. To the total 6.5 billions of carbon returned to the air every year, deforestation also adds another 1-2 billion tons.

Thus is Humanity inflicting on Earth's delicately balanced living environment one of the most severe traumas it has ever had to endure. The resulting fever is what we call Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita may be only tiny symptoms of that trauma.

The Earth occasionally undergoes a severe trauma, such as the impact of
the Chixulub meteorite, ten kilometers in diameter, that 65 million years ago caused massive extinctions of oceanic and terrestrial life including the dinosaurs. Burning a trillion barrels of oil plus an equivalent amount of coal and natural gas in less than two centuries is a geological catastrophe of similar magnitude.

Given enough time after catastrophe, the Earth’s surface environment and its life have always managed to restore equilibrium, including equable temperatures. They will do so again, regardless of whether humankind survives or not.

But such a recovery cannot possibly begin while humanity continues to
accelerate its use of fossil fuels.

Even if we were to stop all fossil-fuel combustion today, it will still take a very long time for our global environment and ecosystems to recover.

Kelvin S. Rodolfo
Professor Emeritus
Dept. of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Illinois at Chicago
845 W. Taylor St.
Chicago IL 60607 U.S.A.
(312) 243-8241 or (312) 733-0617
krodolfo@uic.edu

Advocates for Sustainable Development (Philippines) Foundation

Projects

Vin Lava — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:09:10 -0800

1. Urban Permaculture Center

Metro Manila, where we are located, has a population of approximately 12 million. Food comes from the outlying provinces and travels up to 1500 km by air, sea, and land to get to the wet markets, supermarkets, and groceries. Some foodstuffs come from as far away as China, Australia, New Zealand, South/Southeast Asia, North/South America, Africa, and Europe, but these generally cater to the upscale portion of the population, except for rice which is imported from Vietnam, Thailand, and India.

We are currently looking at a one-hectare site nearby where we can establish a Center for Urban Permaculture. We intend to test different methods of gardening, small-scale agroforestry, animal husbandry, and food processing to see what works best in our situation. This will include indigenous methods, animals, and crops used by our farmers. We will also conduct seminars and workshops on Sustainable Agriculture, Peak Oil/Natural Resources, and Climate Change to the communities around. We will disseminate any lessons learned from our projects.

A portion of the site will be allocated for an Organic Farmers Market to enable the surrounding communities to buy and sell organically produced food.

2. Rural Permaculture Center

We have two properties available to us. One is a 10 hectare coconut farm (with approximately 2000 coconut trees) located in Quezon Province, about 140 km. from Metro Manila. It is at an altitude of 400-450 MASL, 3000 mm of rainfall, with a small rainforest, two springs, and a creek that do not dry up during the dry season. The terrain is rolling, with areas for gardening, fruit trees, ponds, and rice. It hasn't been touched for the last five years, and to our knowledge, has never been chemically farmed.

Another property is in the Province of Bukdnon, on the Island of Mindanao, at an altitude of 1000 MASL, with 2500 mm of rainfall, springs, and 3 creeks. Its ravines are some of the most biodiverse areas that can be found in the locality. This is larger; 50 hectares of rolling land in the Moleta-Manupali Watershed, a portion of which used to be a Robusta coffee farm with 13,500 trees, supplying Nestle Philippines. Another portion was used to grow Certified Seeds for the Philippine Department of Agriculture in the 1980's. In the late 1990's, we started planting rare and endangered indigenous Philippine trees in collaboration with the Environmental Research and Development Bureau of the Philippine Department of the Environment and Natural Resources on 5 hectare of the property. It has a 6000 sq. m. irrigation catchment pond that is leased by a banana plantation nearby. The land has been fallow since the early 90's.

3. Plans

We intend to start development of the Urban Permaculture Center first and scale up slowly to the larger projects in Quezon and Bukdnon with the lessons we learn.

We have associates in the fields of forestry, microbiology, geology, and soil sciences who can be tapped to provide expertise for these projects in their respective fields.

We intend to start the Urban Permaculture Center after our rainy season, which should be sometime in February or March 2007. We have a small budget available for this.

Advocates for Sustainable Development (Philippines) Foundation

Advocates for Sustainable Development (Philippines) Foundation

Vin Lava — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 18:24:43 -0700