It's so obvious that Filipinos are now very desperate to escape from the pit of poverty in the country with either thousands regardless of status in life on exodus to many parts of the world in quest for more glitters to fill the pocket while others grip to sorts of money-making including this Jatropha biodiesel craze in the offing (albeit not only poverty that moves other Filipinos abroad but mere greed).
While researchers and scientists all over the globe are in the zenith of commercializing GMO's and biodiesel crops, Filipinos from all walks of life now talk about the Jatropha curcas L. or commonly known as "tuba-tuba" in Tagalog (Ilocanos call it "tagumbao" or "tag-tagumbao") as another big time source of money. Jatropha is from the family Euphorbiaceae and has a genus of approximately 175 succulents, shrubs and trees. It originates from the Carribean and was spread as a valuable hedge and medicinal plant to Africa, Asia and India by Portuguese traders. It is a weed in Brazil, Fiji, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico and El Salvador (Holm, et. al. 1979).
Jatropha is an introduced plant species into the Philippines and it hardly grows just anywhere in the country. The seeds is known to be a source of biofuel which according to studies if used will not be as hazardous to the environment as compared to the effects of ground fuel that we import.
For a long time, sewage, biodegradable wastes (i.e. kitchen left-overs, garden wastes, etc.) and swine wastes had been used as source of methane as bioenergy for cooking.
Now, aside from this Jatropha, research studies have also proved other agricultural crops that can be extracted for biodiesel oil. The U.S. has its corn while Europe has its flaxseed and rapeseed and Brazil has its sugarcane.
The Philippine government has alloted a P1B investment in biodiesel production primarily for Jatropha and half of the funds came from the Philippine National Oil Co., an alternative development corporation (PNOC-NDC). Half also came from the National Dev't. Co. This fund is mainly for developing marginally landless farmers who are supposed to benefit from the opportunity to grow biodiesel feedstocks including sugarcane, cassava, maize, soybeans and Jatropha.
According to Bioimpact and PNOC and to quote, "Most of the planned biofuel plantation are located in Mindanao where the country's poorest provinces are, where refineries with a capacity of 60, 000 to 240, 000 tonnes will be built at the center of growing areas with a 30, 000 to 120, 000 has. respectively."
While talking some time ago with some graduate students in the Chemical Engineering and other BioSciences field at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, we haven't escaped issues re: crazes that suddenly brought biofuels to the limelight driving politicians even to lick on the bowl of this euphoria. Some foregin students in the university have tried to study biofuel from our coconuts and came out with very attractive results. But the question is, should we allow our coconuts to be exploited more for biofuel when on the other end we direly need it in the food industry? The ratio of the Philippine population to its viable landmass is far not enough for support! Which is more on the priority list? This issue brought concern to some research organizations so that further campaign on this knowledge is restricted albeit investigations on coconuts as source of biofuel per se are still on the top list. At this time, jittery researchers continuously hover upon the chase like vultures to find an alternative commodity that which brought Jatropha curcas to the cinema of Philippine bioresearch.
In January 2006, Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed into law R. A. 9367 or otherwise known as Biofuels Act of 2006 with the following mandates: a) A minimum 1% biodiesel blend into all diesel engine fuels, which increases to 2% after two years; b) a minimum 5% bioethanol blend into all gasoline fuel distributed and sold in the country within two years going up to 10% after 4 years. This law promotes the use of alternative transport fuels consistent with the Declaration on East Asian Energy Security ratified by the 16 heads of state of the Association of SEAN and its dialogue partners during the 12th ASEAN summit held on January 10-15, 2006 in Cebu City. In addition to the mandate, this Act aims to develop and utilize indigenous renewable and sustainably-sourced clean energy sources to reduce the country's dependence on imported oil and lower the amounts of toxins and pollutants in the atmosphere.
All this scenario then bred opportunists to sell Jatropha seedlings although they don't know exactly what is the plant and how it can produce fuel energy to run engines.
I thought all the while though that there's no need anymore for these seedlings to be produced and sold by private growers either in big or small-scale because a big chunk of the pie was alloted purposely for the production of such species!
Are all these discoveries that we so go euphoric about would uplift our economy or would it just spin the country the other way around? Is the Philippines a viable place for Jatropha biodiesel production? How much funds and non-bio energy do we have to spend before a liter of ready to use Jatropha biodiesel oil will be produced? Is it not better to use the alloted funds to rehabilitate the dwindling coconut industry or improve the copra production rather than starting a Jatropha industry from zero? The group tasked to steer this new venture has to hire foreign experts/consultants and which requires an amount of fees. Besides, they themselves travel to Jatropha growing countries like India and the South Americas for seminars and other related concerns. Their expenses is not a joke on the budget! There are so many questions that until now have unclear answers. And I'm not the only one who is cynical about this issue.
Recently, I even chanced upon a headline aired on TV that the Philippine malunggay or commonly called horseradish tree and scientifically known as Moringa oleifera Lamk. is also a plant that can be extracted for biofuel albeit plants generally, if not all, produce oils in different amounts and for different purpose.
The Philippines is just again hitting through this biofuel craze and is making the word/s "biodiesel" and "biofuel" a hot lingo even to the commonest citizen who have vague understanding of this topic while opportunists in the uppermost echelon of the government have already gulped and are enjoying their chunks of share in the supposed wholesome budget particularly for the said research.
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