The Liberia example in the article sounds like a scam, and farmers should be wary unless they receive partial payment up front, before planting.
I have worked with jatropha in Africa, and at the time (early 2000s) jatropha fuel was not quite able to compete on price terms with conventional diesel fuel, which it replaces. Perhaps that has changed now that fossil fuels are more expensive. The seed oil was much more valuable as a factor in soap production, so women who produced it chose to use the oil that way.
Even then, it wasn't valuable enough to plant in monoculture. People harvested jatropha seeds for oil when they were using the plants for other purposes like hedgerows (cattle don't browse on it.) Farmers were using the fields themselves for food or cash crops.
We'll know jatropha is safe to plant as a cash crop when the seed has a price on markets in the producing countries, and farmers can easily sell their jatropha seed the way they would commercialize any other crop. As long as it has to be promoted through these international schemes, farmers should stay away.
The Liberia example in the article sounds like a scam, and farmers should be wary unless they receive partial payment up front, before planting.
I have worked with jatropha in Africa, and at the time (early 2000s) jatropha fuel was not quite able to compete on price terms with conventional diesel fuel, which it replaces. Perhaps that has changed now that fossil fuels are more expensive. The seed oil was much more valuable as a factor in soap production, so women who produced it chose to use the oil that way.
Even then, it wasn't valuable enough to plant in monoculture. People harvested jatropha seeds for oil when they were using the plants for other purposes like hedgerows (cattle don't browse on it.) Farmers were using the fields themselves for food or cash crops.
We'll know jatropha is safe to plant as a cash crop when the seed has a price on markets in the producing countries, and farmers can easily sell their jatropha seed the way they would commercialize any other crop. As long as it has to be promoted through these international schemes, farmers should stay away.