TN farmers discover new crop of hope

Tribal girl, Maragatham, tenderly feels the jatropha plants she has cultivated on her two-acre piece of land on the Anaikatty hill range, ne...

Tribal girl, Maragatham, tenderly feels the jatropha plants she has cultivated on her two-acre piece of land on the Anaikatty hill range, near Coimbatore, 400 km from Chennai.

Till a few months ago, jatropha was just another wild growth on the 21-year-old’s hill tracts. But now, for Maragatham, an agricultural labourer, they are the new ‘‘plants of prosperity’’. Fifteen months from now, she would earn at least Rs 10,000 from the plot. ‘‘That is big money for us,’’ she grins.

Ravaged by drought, with monsoon arriving late, biofuel plants are the new crop of hope for Tamil Nadu: jatropha, sweet sorghum and sugar beet. The plants require just one-tenth of water that a paddy crop guzzles. And the oil extracted from jatropha seeds can be mixed in half-measure with diesel and used as fuel. Besides, ethanol from sweet sorghum and sugar beet stalks can be mixed with petrol for producing a cheaper, eco-friendly fuel.

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With the Central Government aiming to procure five per cent of the country’s fuel requirement from bio-diesel and bio-petrol, the Tamil Nadu government has decided to throw open its vast tracts of wasteland and ‘‘patta’’ agricultural land for growing biofuel plants.

The first seed of hope has already been sown. The UK-based biodiesel firm, D1 Oils pic, will soon start supplying jatropha seedlings to farmers in Tamil Nadu, for producing bio-diesel. The company has tied up with Mohan Breweries and Distilleries for extraction of biodiesel from jatropha seeds.

Says Mark Quinn, managing director, D1 Oils: ‘‘The cultivation of jatropha has the potential to create much-needed jobs in the rural sector and produce a green fuel.’’ India, he says, has the potential to become the leading producer of jatoropha-derived bio-diesel in the world. And sure enough, jatropha is slowly invading the hill tracts of Coimbatore.

Farmers, who had stopped all kinds of cultivation for the last two years, have planted 1.25 lakh jatropha seedlings, provided free of cost by an NGO. The State Rural Development Department has also announced an incentive of Rs 2,000 per acre and foodgrain for every farmer. ‘‘We did not realise there is fuel in jatropha seeds,’’ says 35-year-old Buttan, a tribal from Gudanur village.

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Obviously, the state government has realised there is a huge market for biofuel.

According to dean of Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, Dr Vadivelu, it would take three years for the seedlings to grow into plants and yield seeds. ‘‘Each plant would yield at least three kg of seeds, which could be sold for at least Rs 50,’’ he says. However, the biofuel buzz does not offer much comfort for farmers in the Cauvery delta. For, according to Dr Vadivelu, jatropha cannot grow in the clay-like, saline soil there.