Sweet Light Alternative

The biofuels revolution offers environmentally friendly income-generating opportunities for dryland farmers and even the landless

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is bringing poor and marginal dryland farmers into the global biofuels revolution without compromising food security. Its innovative research on ethanol from sweet sorghum, and on biodiesel from pongamia and jatropha, provides energy, livelihood and food security while reducing the use of fossil fuel, thereby mitigating climate change.

The crops meet the main needs of dryland farmers, as they require little water, can withstand stress and are inexpensive to cultivate. ICRISAT scientists have bred, in partnership with national partners, sorghum varieties and hybrids offering high yields of sugar-rich juice. Although sweet sorghum's ethanol yield per ton is less than for sugarcane, it costs much less to grow. Producing one liter of ethanol from sweet sorghum costs 12.79 rupees (US$0.29) but Rs14.55 ($0.33) from sugarcane. Sweet sorghum requires only one seventh of the water used by sugarcane.

"Sweet sorghum's benefits are threefold," says Dr. Belum VS Reddy, ICRISAT's principal sorghum breeder. "It provides the dryland farmer with grain, fodder for the cattle and additional income through bioethanol."

As sweet sorghum yields grain as well as ethanol, no food production is forfeited. Cultivating sweet sorghum can actually stimulate higher yields of grain and stalk, as well as of fodder from bagasse (crushed stalks). Grain sorghum is grown on 11.7 million hectares (ha) in dryland Asia and 23.4 million ha in Africa, which could be sown with sweet sorghum instead.

The lab, industry, farmer and market come together through a public-private partnership initiative of ICRISAT's Agri-Business Incubator. Entrepreneur AR Palaniswamy, managing director of Rusni Distilleries, reports that partnering with ICRISAT has made the Rusni distillery at Mohammed Shahpur village in Medak District of Andhra Pradesh the world's first to commercially produce ethanol from sweet sorghum. Rusni calculates that an Indian plant producing 40 kiloliters of ethanol per day from sweet sorghum can benefit 5,000 farmers and provide 40,000 person-days of labor per year. By planting sweet sorghum instead of grain sorghum, dryland farmers can earn an income of Rs1,763 ($40) per ha per crop in addition to the existing benefit from the grain.

"From an acre of sweet sorghum we can get at least 15 tons of cane," says farmer Rami Reddy. "Rusni buys it from us at Rs 500 per ton. So a farmers makes a good income from sweet sorghum, in addition to the 200 to 400 kilograms of grain."

Ethanol is a clear-burning fuel with a high octane rating. According to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, India can save nearly 80 million liters of gasoline annually by using a 10% ethanol blend. In addition to the Rusni project in India, ICRISAT has signed agreements with five private Philippine companies to form a consortium to grow sweet sorghum for ethanol. ICRISAT and Rusni are exploring setting up similar consortia in Uganda, Nigeria, Mozambique and South Africa.

ICRISAT also promotes the cultivation of pongamia and jatropha for biodiesel.

"We've partnered with the Andhra Pradesh government to permit poor villagers, especially women's groups, to grow pongamia and jatropha on wasteland and collect the fruit," says Dr. SP Wani, ICRISAT regional theme leader on watershed development. "Once the trees mature, women earn cash by collecting the seeds and pressing out the oil in their villages or selling them to large-scale processors."

In partnership with the state government of Andhra Pradesh and the Indian national government, ICRISAT has developed a plan to plant 300 ha of community-held degraded land in Velchal and Kothlapur villages of Ranga Reddy District for harvest by landless villagers. For the poor tribal community of Powerguda village in Adilabad District, ICRISAT and the Andhra Pradesh government helped establish biodiesel plantations and an oil extraction machine.

"We use the pongamia oil to generate electricity and run diesel engines and pump sets," says Manku Bai of Powerguda village. "We use the press cake as fertilizer."

In partnership with GTZ, the German development cooperation organization, ICRSAT is working with Southern Online Biotechnologies, which has established a 40 kiloliter-per-day biodiesel plant in Nalgonda District of Andhra Pradesh.

Compared to fossil-derived diesel, biodiesel cuts unburned hydrocarbons by 30%, carbon monoxide by 20% and particulates by 25%. As biodiesel crops are renewable and sequester atmospheric carbon, they qualify to earn carbon credits. The World Bank bought 147 tons of carbon credits from Powerguda village to neutralize emissions from air travel by participants in a conference in 2003.

ICRISAT will continue its pro-poor biofuels initiative through innovative research, developing and strengthening public-private partnerships, and efforts to encourage more supportive government policies.