Namibia: Energy Crops Could Jeopardise Food Production

New Era (Windhoek)

6 December 2007
Posted to the web 6 December 2007

Wezi Tjaronda
Windhoek

There are fears that countries will pursue energy crops to reduce
carbon emissions produced by fossil fuels at the expense of food crops.

Many countries have put energy crops under experiment but concerns are
rife that if they become viable, they may get a direct conflict with
food crops.

A scientific officer with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO),
Robert Stefanski, said in Geneva recently, countries should be careful
not to replace food crops especially in developing countries where
food security is already at stake.

He mentioned jatropha circus as one such crop that should be
cultivated with such precautions in mind. The crop is resistant to
drought and pests and produces seeds containing up to 40 percent oil.
The seeds can be crushed and used in a standard diesel engine while
the residue can be processed into biomass to power generation plants.

Namibia has chosen jatropha as her preferred bio-energy plant. Of the
other bio-energy crops, such as sunflower, canola and soy, consultants
who prepared the roadmap found jatropha was already being planted as
hedge in the Caprivi and Kavango regions.

The Kyoto Protocol, through the clean development mechanism, aims to
reduce emission of greenhouse gases, which are implicated in global
warming and climate change, and to remove carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. The renewable fuel sources can play a role in achieving
this cause.

Prime Investment Ltd, a Namibian registered company, proposed to
establish plantations of jatropha carcus in northern Kavango.

In its environmental impact assessment, the company dispelled
misconceptions that it would jeopardise food production.

The EIA said most households were unable to obtain sufficient food for
their needs from crop production and relied on cash income. While
mahangu production may vary in value between N$30 and N$1200 per
hectare per year, food production was very low.

The EIA said while there were concerns that cash crops would replace
food crops and reduce food self-sufficiency, local people invested
very little in agriculture because of low and unreliable output.


"They already depend on cash incomes to provide for most of their
nutritional needs," the EIA said.

The 1994 and 2004 Household Income and Expenditure Survey showed that
consumption of non-food goods rose from 37 percent to 63 percent
during that period. It added that the figures indicated that the
economy of rural Kavango was no longer simply a subsistence economy
but an emerging cash economy, even though people were still relatively
poor.

The project intends to utilise 65000 hectares of land of which 75
percent has been lying fallow or has been abandoned, meaning that the
75 percent could be planted to jatropha without any impact on food
production, it said.
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