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In Search of Sustainable Biofuels in Tanzania
The following excerpt from Chapter 6 of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (New Press 2019) chronicles the failed attempt by British Sun Biofuels to make biodiesel from jatropha plants in Kisarawe, Tanzania. And the more modest and sustainable efforts by Kakute and other community organizations to harness the plant’s potential for sustainable and equitable small-scale economic development. Kakute proudly celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Sun Biofuels dissolved in 2016. Villagers in Kisarawe are still waiting to get their land back.
Villagers near the Tanzanian town of Kisarawe got the full fury of the integration of food, fuel, and financial markets. They agreed to what turned out to be a speculative land deal to grow jatropha, a little-used African plant, for biofuels. When it failed they were left on the outside of their 20,000 acres looking in. Fittingly, it was Goldman Sachs that first identified jatropha as a good bet for oil for biodiesel.[1]
Britain-based Sun Biofuels had secured a 99-year lease with promises not just of compensation for the land but jobs, roads, clinics, schools, and wells. The company started by clearing 5,000 acres of mostly forestland and planted jatropha trees, an oilseed crop. Europe was looking for feedstock to meet its renewal-fuel mandates for biofuel use, and jatropha was the new “green gold.” Jatropha was supposed to be a biofuels miracle crop, because it was native to Africa, it was inedible and therefore would not compete with food or feed crops, and it was advertised as growing on “marginal lands,” so it would not compete for cropland. Jatropha was all the rage across Africa in the wake of the 2007–8 food price spikes, attracting venture capitalists like the ones behind Sun Biofuels.[2]
As it turned out, jatropha was a bust, particularly for speculators. It took 3–4 years to get a crop, a long time for impatient capital. It hadn’t really been domesticated for commercial cultivation, so no one really knew what varieties would grow well and be suitable for biofuel production. Early indications were that to be productive it needed more water than other biodiesel feed stocks.[3] Sure it grew on marginal lands, but only with marginal returns. The last thing investors wanted were marginal returns, so they…
