Power to the Poor, People! CIAT, ICRISAT, IFAD, MMSU, Vietnam

HO CHI MINH CITY - The costs of fossil fuels rise for city travelers even as the biofuel crops grow for country toilers; the oil prices shoot up fast while the fuel crops raise their stalks slowly. It is not yet a win-win situation. The race still belongs to the swift and strong. Black oil is beautiful to them.

I see that the growing of biofuels is the growing of our Green Hope for Mother Earth. I also see that while biofuels are in fact a little strange even to the poor farmers who grow them, IFAD and ICRISAT are no strangers to each other. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is one of the agencies of the UN, while the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in India is 1 of 15 international research centers under the aegis of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) based in the US, as is the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) based in the Philippines. IFAD and ICRISAT (along with other CGIAR centers like IRRI) are both into the development of agriculture, especially involving the poor farmers and their families.

"Power to the Poor!" might as well have shouted William Dar, Director General of ICRISAT in his welcome remarks titled "Biofuels: Power to the Poor" at the Expert Consultation on Biofuels held at the IRRI campus in Los Baños, Laguna, the Philippines on 27 August 2007. Today, Thursday, 28 April 2011, in Ho Chi Minh City and elsewhere, what Dar said almost 4 years ago is truer: "We're all shocked at how gasoline is emptying our pockets of cash these days." Including those of us who have no cars. We all have to pay the high price of neglecting the principle of sustainability since May 1876 when Nicolaus Otto invented "the first practical 4-stroke internal combustion engine" powered by gasoline (ANN, inventors.about.com). For almost 100 years after Otto, we never thought of squandering gasoline, this non-renewable energy resource, until the 1973 oil crisis. Gasoline was Power to the Rich! And all the more so now.

Biofuels are Power to the Poor, People!

The sweet sorghum story continues. After the 27 August 2007 biofuel consultations in the Philippines, IFAD, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and ICRISAT conducted on 8-9 November 2007 a "Global consultation on pro-poor sweet sorghum development for biofuel production and introduction to tropical sugar beet" (ANN, ifad.org). Since I've been enamored with sweet sorghum as a hardy, multi-purpose crop excellent for poor farmers in the drylands of Asia and Africa since I first met this crop in February 2007 (see my "The Yankee Dawdle. On Discovery Sorghum, The Great Climate Crop," 04 February 2007, American Chronicle), I will focus here on this "pro-poor energy crop" as it was referred to in the summary report of the global discussion.

Somebody forgot to state the venue for the 2-day global consultation, an important piece of information, but I forgive those who prepared and those who approved the electronic report, in pdf format, because it contains a good summary of the advantages of sorghum over sugarcane as a biofuel crop. And these are:

(1) "Sweet sorghum is an efficient converter of solar energy, as it requires low inputs and yet, is a high carbohydrate producer." That means if you grow this crop, in general, you get more for less. If you are the landlord, you get more bang for your buck. If you are the farmer, less pain, more gain.

(2) "As a drought-tolerant crop with multiple uses, it is particularly important for farmers in fragile agro-economic conditions." That is an extremely loaded statement, but I like it. That means:

(a) Sweet sorghum grows well even on moisture-challenged soils. And there are plenty of those in the drylands of Asia and Africa.

(b) Sweet sorghum has a great many uses: food, feed, fodder, fertilizer (mulch or compost), fuel (bagasse), and fuel (ethanol), in which case, I am inspired to call sweet sorghum an F6 crop (unlike sugarcane) - it has more uses; even as sweet sorghum is a C4 crop (like sugarcane) - a good converter of sunlight into stored energy in the form of carbohydrates.

(c) Sweet sorghum is crucial to farmers who are marginalized (poor people) and who reside in marginal sites (poor soils). With sweet sorghum, a little water goes a long, long way.

(3) The sugar content of sweet sorghum ranges from 12 to 21%; like sugarcane, the syrup can be converted directly to ethanol, no translation necessary.

(4) Sweet sorghum is a multi-location crop; it grows well under greatly diverse climates, from temperate to subtropical to tropical. You can't say that of sugarcane.

(5) Sweet sorghum is a double fuel crop - the stalk as well the grains can be used as sources of bioethanol. Unlike sugarcane.

(6) The sweet sorghum bagasse has a higher nutritional value than sugarcane when fed to livestock.

(7) You can grow 2-3 crops of sweet sorghum (3-5 months) per year, but only 1 crop of sugarcane (10-12 months).

(8) Sorghum demands two-thirds less water to grow than sugarcane.

If Secretary of Agriculture Proceso Alcala is listening, I say it's time we paid two-thirds less attention to sugarcane and three-thirds more attention to sweet sorghum!

I want to add there that I know if you ratoon sweet sorghum, the yield is even more than the main crop! And the 2nd and 3rd ratoons will give you even more! (info sheet on sweet sorghum, bar.gov.ph). Also, the info sheet says the sugar content of sweet sorghum is 15-23%; since the report is based on plantings in the Philippines, this means that Philippine soils are richer and give more sugar for your sorghum than anywhere else.

In Ho Chi Minh City on 14 April 2011, they held the third and final annual review of the IFAD-ICRISAT project conducted for 3 biofuel crops: sweet sorghum (in India, the Philippines, China and Mali), cassava (Vietnam and Colombia), and Jatropha (India and Mali). The crops had been bred, designed or selected to produce bioethanol (sweet sorghum and cassava) and biodiesel (Jatropha) enough to sustain not only the distillers but also the farmers - and the supply of biofuels.

Ho Chi Minh City continued what IFAD and ICRISAT had begun in their ongoing relationship. In the biofuel R&D review in this city, Dar congratulated the R&D teams of CIAT (another CGIAR center), ICRISAT, MMSU (a state university of agriculture in Northern Philippines where the drylands are), Nong Lam University (Vietnam), and NGOs "for meeting all the deliverables of the project" - producing the seeds, generating the production techniques, and transferring the knowledge to the private sector where possible. Producing knowledge, generating hope, and transferring both to those who need them most. This is the slow lane, slow but safe.

In the fast lane, "peak oil" was reached in 2005, according to Scientific American (as cited by Teodoro C Mendoza, December 2007, Impact Magazine, scribd.com), while biofuels have hardly taken off the ground.

Peak oil, all the more we need bio oil, which knows no peak. And while the burning of oil continues to contribute to the carbon dioxide depot in the sky, the growing of biofuel crops continues to gobble carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Maximum oil, maximum pollution of the air. Max bio oil, max depollution of the air. The planting of a biofuel crop is a clean air act.

So I appreciate sweet sorghum like ICRISAT appreciates the support of IFAD in terms of funding for biofuel projects. In fact, it can be said that the relationship between IFAD and ICRISAT goes a long, long way back.

Kanayo Nwanze was appointed IFAD President on 18 February 2009 at the UN Headquarters in Rome, after which Dar said of him:

We have one leader in IFAD who understands the importance of developing and supporting agriculture to help the poor. His solid science and research background augurs well for the CGIAR as well.

It happens that Nwanze was a Principal Scientist (Entomology) at ICRISAT from August 1979 to November 1996. So this is another science manager who happens to understand the need for crucial R&D in agriculture. (That, the science fund managers in the Philippines don't understand, except those of PCARRD and BAR.)

The IFAD-ICRISAT partnership was already seen as very fruitful as early as 2 years ago. The joint statement "IFAD and ICRISAT" officially issued on May 2009 said (icrisat.org):

IFAD assistance has made a marked difference in the war ICRISAT wages against hunger and poverty. Thousands of SAT farmers have learnt to practice safer, more efficient agriculture, thus making their struggle against erratic nature easier. This partnership has given them new hope and an unshakeable belief in a better future. The faith of these millions of poor in the semi-arid tropics needs to be sustained, in order to fulfill the promise of Science with a Human Face.

I know "Science with a Human Face" is a mantra of ICRISAT since 10 years ago. When Director General of ICRISAT & science manager William Dar looks into the mirror, he sees a very poor boy of Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur in Northern Philippines who was born in 1953. He understands what it is to be destitute.