Agriculture for Food Production, Not for Bio-Fuel

by Lionel Derenoncourt, JH Coordinator

The Haitian Joining Hands network recently created, has announced that its first campaign would be focused against the commercial production of Jatropha for bio-fuel in Haiti. It might help to explore here some of the reasons for such a choice.

The members of the network have already identified the need to conduct a systematic study of the jatropha issue and they will publish the results of their research later. Over the past few weeks I have done some personal research about jatropha and here are some of my findings.

Jatropha as indigenous plant
Indeed, jatropha is well known in Haiti under the name of “medsiyen”. It is a wild shrub or small tree that is planted in rural fences all over the country. It is also indigenous to the land. Numerous varieties of it exist and it has various uses in traditional medicine. It is very hardy and will be found often as the greenest plant where most other vegetation is brown because of drought or poor soil conditions. So, what is the big deal about jatropha?

Jatropha as cash crop

Since the 1980s some scientific research concluded that jatropha produces a seed that is very rich in oil that can be used with a minimum of filtration and processing as fuel in diesel engines. In the craze of the recent fuel price crisis jatropha emerged together with ethanol producing crops, as a strong contender in the race to produce bio-fuel. Some say that it is better than the other bio-fuel crops because it would not be in competition with food crops for human consumption. According to business promoters, the seeds of jatropha can fetch about $600 per hectare harvested in the Haitian market.

In recent months there has been quite a flurry of promotion of jatropha cultivation as a cash crop in Haiti. Businesses from the USA, from Brazil even from Europe have initiated ventures with Haitian businessmen to establish plantations and/or to purchase and process seeds into oil for export.

On the web one can find a number of articles extolling the virtues of jatropha and the opportunity it represents for Haiti. The country is known for its abundance of marginal land otherwise not appropriate for food crops production. The Haitian government itself has opened up the country’s gates to foreign investors interested in the production of jatropha. USAID, the Inter American Development Bank are promoting jatropha and providing funding for jatropha “projects”. Even churches in Haiti as well as in the USA have embarked into the promotion of jatropha and are actively pursuing production and marketing ventures with the aim of raising funds to help impoverished rural communities. Even the Clinton Foundation has come with a $50 million dollar aid packet for Haiti. One of its key components is the jatropha bio-fuel production.

Causes for Concern

None of these would really be causes for concerns if it weren’t for the following:

1. West African Farmer with Jatropha plant and fruits.   Photo: Icrisat

   One of the strongest arguments for the cultivation of jatropha in Haiti is the fact that most of the hillsides are depleted of productive soil and the rural population is desperately poor.Jatropha would be an enticing source of supplemental income while making use of land that is not much good for anything else. However, much as we know of other commodities that came before it like indigo, coffee, sugar cane, etc, once it is established that there is money in commercial jatropha, there is no reason to believe that Haitian farmers will only use degraded land for its cultivation. We can reasonably fear that it will displace food crops from good land and further decrease food production in the country. Furthermore, the concept of land that is “marginal” and “unfit for agriculture” is very relative. In Haiti, different from South America and Africa, except for what is known as government land, all land belong to people and is farmed on even with the knowledge that yields will be poor. Whatever harvest is obtained helps a rural family to survive. The Haitian Joining Hands network is concerned about what it sees as a process that will deepen the dependency of rural population on food imports, instead of one to help them rebuild their food production. Already some companies are promoting community farming of jatropha intercropped with Moringa trees. Their plans include production of moringa leaf powder to be used as food supplement for undernourished Haitian children. Whether that is enough to mitigate the concerns mentioned above is doubtful.
2. Jatropha is a poisonous plant with significant levels of HCN (Hydrogen Cyanide) in all its parts: leaves, stems, fruits and seed. It has been documented that while up to two seeds might be a laxative, five seeds will kill an adult person.

   Goat tied to but not feeding on Jatropha shrub in Haiti Photo: The Jatropha Website

   The leaves have a milky sap that burns the skin. Even the press cake residue from mechanized oil processing has high levels of HCN which makes it unfit for human or animal consumption. It is well known that goats will not consume jatropha because of its toxicity. According to an August 2008 report by Ted Mendoza , Oscar Zamora, Joven Lales, at the Faculty of Crop Science, College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines at Los Baños, “Jatropha produces a toxic substance called curcin. Will this substance not have allelopathic effects on its companion crops? The planting of Jatropha was banned in Northern Australia due to this toxin.” While there exist up to 120 varieties of jatropha with various degrees of toxicity, Jatropha Curcas is not the least toxic yet is the most promoted for bio-fuel cultivation. There are legitimate concerns about the potential damages that commercial production of these poisonous seeds can cause among a population not sufficiently equipped to protect themselves and especially children against it.
3. The prospects of commercial production of jatropha as a cash crop, especially the prospect of having large tracts of lands in intensive toxic monoculture is a serious cause for concern. There will be environmental impacts and probable social impacts on rural communities already confronted with the virtual collapse of our production of local food crops. There is a sense that because of the business investments, there is much attention to jatropha at this time. Yet, investment in food production is sorely needed; but neither the Haitian government or local businessmen are taking steps to help rebuild the Haitian food production systems. What we have instead is further erosion of Haitian farmer’s production capacity and the loss of Haiti’s sovereignty and food security.

These are some of the main points that I can share at this time. Further research is on the way. I would suggest consulting the web for relevant articles and reports. Here are some of the links that provided information for the notes above:

http://www.relocalize.net/jatropha_what_the_public_should_know
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090511/BUSINESS/705119944/1005
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2007/11/haitis-hopes-for-biofuels-rest-on-jatropha-plant-50480

Jatropha! A socio – economic pitfall for Mozambique
Jatropha and Sustainable Livelihood of Small-scale Farmers
Case Study 'Jatropha Curcas' India - April 2004
Claims and Facts on Jatropha curcas L.

A first consultation on Joining Hands organizing in Haiti

by Lionel Derenoncourt, JH Coordinator

From 3-8 February 2009, representatives of people’s organizations, NGOs and religious institutions met in to review hunger issues in Haiti, to consider whether they wanted to form a network as a platform of coordination and to discuss the possibility of participating in the Joining Hands initiative of the Presbyterian Hunger Program. The 35 delegates gathered at the Peasant Movement of Papay training center near Hinche in the Central Plateau of Haiti. Representing mostly small farmers, fishermen, women and youth associations, they came from all corners of the country or, as they like to state in Haiti, from the 10 geographical regions. Unfortunately, the representative of the Episcopal Church of Haiti, from the St Barnabas Agricultural School was not able to be there, as well as the liaison with Haitian partners for PC(USA), Pix Mahler. Hopefully next time they will be able to partipate, as our partners in Haiti are very interested in inviting them again.

Reviewing the Haitian context

The event was organized jointly by the Christian Service of Haiti (SCH) – an old time ecumenical partner of PHP, the Peasant Movement of Papay – one of our current key partners in the country, and CONANE, an advocacy network. The economic social and political context of Haiti was covered by an array of high caliber Haitian experts, including professor Johnson Desir, an economist, and professor Herard Jadotte, sociologist, and author of the Map of Poverty in Haiti and of the World Bank sponsored research on poverty mitigation programs. Mr Patrick Camille of the NGO Support Group to Repatriated and Refugees (GARR) funded by Oxfam GB and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) opened the series of presentations with an analysis of the structures of the economy of Haiti. Chavannes Jean Baptiste covered the Dynamics of the Haiti’s Agricultural sector. Eventually, I presented on the Joining Hands model of international development partnership as well as on the Joining Hands approach to organizing for peaceful social change.

Network building

Debates were very lively as the delegates were people with genuine experience of development issues and strong conviction, representing a diverse range of opinions. On Saturday morning, February 7, the assembly made the decision to constitute a formal network of the organizations represented at this meeting, while leaving the door open for the inclusion of a limited number of additional members.

They also reached a consensus to participate fully in the Joining Hands initiative and to call their network “Men Asanm – Ayiti” or Joining Hands – Haiti. An interim steering committee was appointed, composed of five people: Chavannes JB - MPP , Edouard Paultre (Former president of the Federation of Protestant Churches of Haiti), Horlna Pierre (Administrator of SCH), Doudou Pierre (from CONANE - Cap Haitian) and Moril Jeudi (Fishermen Association of the South - East). That committee was mandated to compile and distribute the minutes of this gathering, and to prepare a draft of statutes for this network, to call for a formal “constitutional” assembly to approve the statutes and establish the permanent coordinating structure of the network. Given the pressing nature of the business at hand, the gathering decided to hold that constitutional assembly no later than May of this year at a date yet to be determined by the steering committee.

Stewardship of the Environment for Food Sovereignty

It is also important to mention that the gathering decided to focus the energy of the network on the general theme of “Stewardship of the Environment for Food Sovereignty.” After a very fruitful discussion the participants voted to engage their first Joining Hands campaign on “Jatropha as a factor of environmental damage and food insecurity for Haiti.” They were very pleased by the prospects of engaging into a Joining Hands relationship with a network of Presbyterian churches in the USA, particularly with the implication of waging a joint campaign against bio-fuel as factor of food insecurity in the world today.

This mission and the gathering mentioned here were in direct response to the invitation made to us last July at Chapman University by the Haitian guest of the Joining Hands international event. The conference in Papay was very successful and all participants left with a sense that it met all their expectations and more. This goes to the credit of the organizing committee and particularly to MPP for an excellent coordination of logistics for all the participants, for the excellent food and for the quality of the hospitality provided by their staff.