Global Community
LET'S DISCUSS AND COMBINE TO AVERT JATROPHA SOFFOCATION OF COUNTRIES OF THE 'SOUTH'
Dear friends:
I am sorry if my apparent web illitereacy has gotten you worried as to how to handle a vanishing discussion, here today, gone tomorrow, as my last contribution has been. Thanks to Louis for raising the issue with me today and suggesting precisely why the disappearance happened. I went back to the contribution a couple of days ago and saw it was full of avoidable mistakes, not merely typos, mind you, so I decided to edit once more! I couldn't complete the task before other tasks pulled me away and, in my illiteracy, I thought I could simply save what I had done and return to it at my convenience!! Lo and behold, I saved a blank document. This is what you get when you engage in these complex tasks with illiterate smallholder farmers like myself. Sorry indeed, and here is the document once again.
FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIONS TO AGROFUELS
With special reference to JATROPHA – DIESEL
1. Whatever new development, technological or otherwise, that human beings have embarked upon with the primary/sole intention of maximising profit, human interest and wellbeing have always been sacrificed.
2. The general drive to use land, meant fundamentally for sustaining human livelihoods via food production, for the production of cheap alternatives to fossil fuels that are a wasting and unsustainable asset, has been based on the struggle to maximise profit. All that its protagonists claim ─ that it is a safe fuel, that it is sustainable, that it is non-polluting ─ amount to no more than afterthoughts and false excuses.
3. At any rate, a civilisation based on insatiable and ever growing appetite for consumption of fuels, starting with fossil fuels and now expanding into agro-fuels, is fundamentally human-unfriendly.
4. Although human beings, including our own ancestors in Africa, have long used biological organic material, in the form of oils mainly, for fuel production, this has been done on a scale and with the central motivation that is guided by what is best for human beings and the environment. The scale of such production, community Biofuel production, has always been small, manageable and community-based, with a strong sense of responsibility for human welfare being central to them.
5. Today’s Industrial Agrofuel production, an ever expanding octopus, is in the greedy hands of corporate giants of the Northern hemisphere, whose divinity is money, and more money. Worries about the health, livelihood and happiness of human beings and their communities are strictly foreign to such corporate concerns.
6. Before Agribusiness Trans-National Corporations and their supporting governments embarked upon the use of land, meant to produce food for human beings for the production of fuels for engines, safer and more human-friendly as well as nature-respecting alternatives were already known to science.
7. Why, we should ask them, did they and our governments prefer to wage a struggle for precious land and put the livelihood of millions of people in jeopardy.
8. In order to deceive people and get them to agree to this criminal conversion, the protagonists of Jatropha Agrofuel production have told lies upon lies. They have claimed that this shrub, Jatropha, actually thrives on marginal and spent land. This is patently untrue as we know that the quality of soil also determines the productivity of the plant. Will you, as a Jatropha farmer, plant your own crop on degraded land and go into competition in the market with someone who grew his/her own on rich soil? Most certainly not and we know from looking at existing projects that the claim that land used for this crop is degraded and unusable land, is far from the truth, anywhere, especially in Nigeria. Beyond this, who is to say that a piece of land is degraded beyond repair and rehabilitation to produce food for human beings? We need go no further than Ethiopia to see that even the most degraded piece of land can and is often turned around to produce bountiful harvests of staple food crops. Why are we deceiving ourselves?
9. We also have the example of what happened to smallholder farmers in Tanzania and Benin Republic, to put to rest the story of how Jatropha plantation projects have turned poor farmers into self sufficient and reasonably well-off farmers. Farmers, deceived into joining these projects as Contract farmers, have soon discovered that, right from the very agreement signed with them by the companies, to the total monopoly of all stages and outputs of the enterprise by these companies, the story is one of deepening impoverishment of both farmers and their ancestral lands.
10. The claim by our governments that the project would entail transfer of technology, new manufacturing capacities, jobs for our youths and all-round development for the communities, is a sorry self delusion, at best and, at worst, just another example of how our own leaders shut their eyes, take their own cuts, and destroy their nations. No nation transfers its useful or new technology to another and it is to live in a fool’s paradise to think that it would be otherwise. The real heart of the technologies involved would never be truly transferred to our people. We shall merely continue to export Jatropha seed, minimally processed with very little added value, to the Northern hemisphere. It must be clear that the scenario would not be much different from that of Cacao which has persisted for scores of years now and the main profits would be reaped by the agribusinesses. When, as is being done already, all African countries have been seduced, through their own leaders, to produce Jatropha seeds in ever large tonnages, they would all begin to compete against one another and the price of this new “commodity of the dependents” would fall and fall until the producers die of poverty.
11. The claim that we ourselves would have more access to more diesel and other products of Agrofuel production, is also a pitiable lack of hindsight, let alone foresight. What has happened to the output of the many oil wells that have destroyed the lives, livelihoods, health and dignity of our people in the Niger Delta? Have we become self-reliant producers of our crude, or refiners of our petrol and other products, or manufacturers of the material used for our incessant and never successful TAMs?
12. Even fools would recognise already that there is no way in which the diversion of land for Jatropha planting would not compete with our food production systems, fragile as they are. Our governments are already falling over one another to strike juicy arrangements, of laughable Direct Foreign Investments, with all manner of companies from the North. Our elites, from aspiring entrepreneurs to Senators who have awarded themselves obscene salaries right under our noses, have dug their deadly teeth into their home communities, persuading them that this is the way to go, and taking huge stretches of land to offer to their business partners on Jatropha production. All these negative forces, combine to lure smallholder farmers into selling cheaply, their family and community lands, become Jatropha slaves for a pittance, leave off planting staples that they and their families and communities need desperately, and make wholesale dive into poverty.
13. It is now a known fact to those who care to search, but still vehemently denied by Jatropha advocates, that where this plant is exploited in plantation expanse, cassava would find it very difficult to thrive properly.
14. It doesn’t seem odd to any of these greedy protagonists of unlimited Jatropha production, that the companies and entrepreneurs from the North and their governments, have not found it necessary to stay at home and use their own food producing lands for the planting of diesel and alcohol for their own engines. Rather, out of boundless love, they cross the seas and skies to come to Africa, to take our land, banish our food staples, import all manner of harmful genetic material, destroy our biodiversity, to produce agro-diesel and agro-alcohol for their engines. Of course, they do not know that, as an example, if the USA were to produce from its own farmlands, the Agrofuel needed for its transport system in one year, it would need to use up all food producing lands and need up to another 21% more to satisfy this need ---- for just one year!!
15. In all these considerations, no one seems to have thought about the needs and interests of UNBORN NIGERIANS. If our own great grandparents had sold off the food producing lands in our communities, what would we have done for a living today? Land that is alienated to Jatropha planting, does not come free for another 50 years at least.
16. If we continue the way we are going in this generation, the food crisis which now makes Gari no longer a poor man’s food, would be child’s play when compared with what our grandchildren would have to suffer. All this, because our elites cannot control their greed and be responsible to the present and the future.
17. Moreover, there is no way in which the Jatropha economy would expand without it being used as an excuse for bringing into the country, Genetically Modified/Engineered seeds, for Jatropha and all other crops in the agro-fuel economy. Those who pursue the Jatropha economy are motivated by nothing else but ever expanding profit. The huge investments that they make also compel them to seek to produce the largest output possible and it is GE (genetically engineered) varieties that can guarantee them this, even though it means, in the medium term, severe damage to our biodiversity and our native seeds.
18. Another scramble for Africa has begun and it can only end in the deepening of the avoidable poverty that our leaders have brought upon the people and their environment. Palm oil, our major cooking oil, is already in danger of being snatched away from the pots of our people by hungry engines of Europe and America, Japan, China, etc. Our Cassava and Maize are being genetically engineered in ways that would infect our own native staples, to produce alcohol to run the cars in Europe, America, Japan, etc. Soon, our own crops ─ maize, sorghum, cassava, palm oil, and many more, would be contaminated by these unhealthy invaders to the point where they would no longer promote our health and wellbeing. We shall end up depending on food from America and Europe!!
19. Tell our leaders, loud and clear, this is the disaster into which they are leading us and posterity will surely judge them, very harshly indeed.
20. There is a lot more to say on Jatropha and other Agrofuel feedstock that our leaders and their foreign collaborators wield over our heads like the sword of Satan. If, however, what has been said above is not enough to change the mind of any of our leaders, inside or outside government, to reverse the dangerous trend, we, as the people, must ask God to lead us to a new dawn.
Thanks and God bless.
'Seinde
I am sorry if my apparent web illitereacy has gotten you worried as to how to handle a vanishing discussion, here today, gone tomorrow, as my last contribution has been. Thanks to Louis for raising the issue with me today and suggesting precisely why the disappearance happened. I went back to the contribution a couple of days ago and saw it was full of avoidable mistakes, not merely typos, mind you, so I decided to edit once more! I couldn't complete the task before other tasks pulled me away and, in my illiteracy, I thought I could simply save what I had done and return to it at my convenience!! Lo and behold, I saved a blank document. This is what you get when you engage in these complex tasks with illiterate smallholder farmers like myself. Sorry indeed, and here is the document once again.
FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIONS TO AGROFUELS
With special reference to JATROPHA – DIESEL
1. Whatever new development, technological or otherwise, that human beings have embarked upon with the primary/sole intention of maximising profit, human interest and wellbeing have always been sacrificed.
2. The general drive to use land, meant fundamentally for sustaining human livelihoods via food production, for the production of cheap alternatives to fossil fuels that are a wasting and unsustainable asset, has been based on the struggle to maximise profit. All that its protagonists claim ─ that it is a safe fuel, that it is sustainable, that it is non-polluting ─ amount to no more than afterthoughts and false excuses.
3. At any rate, a civilisation based on insatiable and ever growing appetite for consumption of fuels, starting with fossil fuels and now expanding into agro-fuels, is fundamentally human-unfriendly.
4. Although human beings, including our own ancestors in Africa, have long used biological organic material, in the form of oils mainly, for fuel production, this has been done on a scale and with the central motivation that is guided by what is best for human beings and the environment. The scale of such production, community Biofuel production, has always been small, manageable and community-based, with a strong sense of responsibility for human welfare being central to them.
5. Today’s Industrial Agrofuel production, an ever expanding octopus, is in the greedy hands of corporate giants of the Northern hemisphere, whose divinity is money, and more money. Worries about the health, livelihood and happiness of human beings and their communities are strictly foreign to such corporate concerns.
6. Before Agribusiness Trans-National Corporations and their supporting governments embarked upon the use of land, meant to produce food for human beings for the production of fuels for engines, safer and more human-friendly as well as nature-respecting alternatives were already known to science.
7. Why, we should ask them, did they and our governments prefer to wage a struggle for precious land and put the livelihood of millions of people in jeopardy.
8. In order to deceive people and get them to agree to this criminal conversion, the protagonists of Jatropha Agrofuel production have told lies upon lies. They have claimed that this shrub, Jatropha, actually thrives on marginal and spent land. This is patently untrue as we know that the quality of soil also determines the productivity of the plant. Will you, as a Jatropha farmer, plant your own crop on degraded land and go into competition in the market with someone who grew his/her own on rich soil? Most certainly not and we know from looking at existing projects that the claim that land used for this crop is degraded and unusable land, is far from the truth, anywhere, especially in Nigeria. Beyond this, who is to say that a piece of land is degraded beyond repair and rehabilitation to produce food for human beings? We need go no further than Ethiopia to see that even the most degraded piece of land can and is often turned around to produce bountiful harvests of staple food crops. Why are we deceiving ourselves?
9. We also have the example of what happened to smallholder farmers in Tanzania and Benin Republic, to put to rest the story of how Jatropha plantation projects have turned poor farmers into self sufficient and reasonably well-off farmers. Farmers, deceived into joining these projects as Contract farmers, have soon discovered that, right from the very agreement signed with them by the companies, to the total monopoly of all stages and outputs of the enterprise by these companies, the story is one of deepening impoverishment of both farmers and their ancestral lands.
10. The claim by our governments that the project would entail transfer of technology, new manufacturing capacities, jobs for our youths and all-round development for the communities, is a sorry self delusion, at best and, at worst, just another example of how our own leaders shut their eyes, take their own cuts, and destroy their nations. No nation transfers its useful or new technology to another and it is to live in a fool’s paradise to think that it would be otherwise. The real heart of the technologies involved would never be truly transferred to our people. We shall merely continue to export Jatropha seed, minimally processed with very little added value, to the Northern hemisphere. It must be clear that the scenario would not be much different from that of Cacao which has persisted for scores of years now and the main profits would be reaped by the agribusinesses. When, as is being done already, all African countries have been seduced, through their own leaders, to produce Jatropha seeds in ever large tonnages, they would all begin to compete against one another and the price of this new “commodity of the dependents” would fall and fall until the producers die of poverty.
11. The claim that we ourselves would have more access to more diesel and other products of Agrofuel production, is also a pitiable lack of hindsight, let alone foresight. What has happened to the output of the many oil wells that have destroyed the lives, livelihoods, health and dignity of our people in the Niger Delta? Have we become self-reliant producers of our crude, or refiners of our petrol and other products, or manufacturers of the material used for our incessant and never successful TAMs?
12. Even fools would recognise already that there is no way in which the diversion of land for Jatropha planting would not compete with our food production systems, fragile as they are. Our governments are already falling over one another to strike juicy arrangements, of laughable Direct Foreign Investments, with all manner of companies from the North. Our elites, from aspiring entrepreneurs to Senators who have awarded themselves obscene salaries right under our noses, have dug their deadly teeth into their home communities, persuading them that this is the way to go, and taking huge stretches of land to offer to their business partners on Jatropha production. All these negative forces, combine to lure smallholder farmers into selling cheaply, their family and community lands, become Jatropha slaves for a pittance, leave off planting staples that they and their families and communities need desperately, and make wholesale dive into poverty.
13. It is now a known fact to those who care to search, but still vehemently denied by Jatropha advocates, that where this plant is exploited in plantation expanse, cassava would find it very difficult to thrive properly.
14. It doesn’t seem odd to any of these greedy protagonists of unlimited Jatropha production, that the companies and entrepreneurs from the North and their governments, have not found it necessary to stay at home and use their own food producing lands for the planting of diesel and alcohol for their own engines. Rather, out of boundless love, they cross the seas and skies to come to Africa, to take our land, banish our food staples, import all manner of harmful genetic material, destroy our biodiversity, to produce agro-diesel and agro-alcohol for their engines. Of course, they do not know that, as an example, if the USA were to produce from its own farmlands, the Agrofuel needed for its transport system in one year, it would need to use up all food producing lands and need up to another 21% more to satisfy this need ---- for just one year!!
15. In all these considerations, no one seems to have thought about the needs and interests of UNBORN NIGERIANS. If our own great grandparents had sold off the food producing lands in our communities, what would we have done for a living today? Land that is alienated to Jatropha planting, does not come free for another 50 years at least.
16. If we continue the way we are going in this generation, the food crisis which now makes Gari no longer a poor man’s food, would be child’s play when compared with what our grandchildren would have to suffer. All this, because our elites cannot control their greed and be responsible to the present and the future.
17. Moreover, there is no way in which the Jatropha economy would expand without it being used as an excuse for bringing into the country, Genetically Modified/Engineered seeds, for Jatropha and all other crops in the agro-fuel economy. Those who pursue the Jatropha economy are motivated by nothing else but ever expanding profit. The huge investments that they make also compel them to seek to produce the largest output possible and it is GE (genetically engineered) varieties that can guarantee them this, even though it means, in the medium term, severe damage to our biodiversity and our native seeds.
18. Another scramble for Africa has begun and it can only end in the deepening of the avoidable poverty that our leaders have brought upon the people and their environment. Palm oil, our major cooking oil, is already in danger of being snatched away from the pots of our people by hungry engines of Europe and America, Japan, China, etc. Our Cassava and Maize are being genetically engineered in ways that would infect our own native staples, to produce alcohol to run the cars in Europe, America, Japan, etc. Soon, our own crops ─ maize, sorghum, cassava, palm oil, and many more, would be contaminated by these unhealthy invaders to the point where they would no longer promote our health and wellbeing. We shall end up depending on food from America and Europe!!
19. Tell our leaders, loud and clear, this is the disaster into which they are leading us and posterity will surely judge them, very harshly indeed.
20. There is a lot more to say on Jatropha and other Agrofuel feedstock that our leaders and their foreign collaborators wield over our heads like the sword of Satan. If, however, what has been said above is not enough to change the mind of any of our leaders, inside or outside government, to reverse the dangerous trend, we, as the people, must ask God to lead us to a new dawn.
Thanks and God bless.
'Seinde
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Louis Loizou on -
Dear Brother Seinde,
I am so glad that this article has returned from the mystical processes of information technology and re-incarnated here (or whatever is the appropriate term, there being no flesh involved:-) . May I say in your defence that IT is not the real world, but a set of virtual tools that some mistake for reality. You, my dear brother, are living in the very heart of reality and you are rich in the knowledge and skills that all humans need to re-learn and re-value. When the supermarket shelves in the North are empty through whatever system failure comes first, we will face the stark reality that it is not human-invented systems that feed us, it is nature herself that feeds us. How ever many gigabytes gigahertz and other massive amounts of electronic processing power exist at our fingertips these measures will never feed us.
Thank you for this comprehensive sketch of the vast subject of biofuels and their protagonists, whether TNCs or governments, who cannot hear the facts over the noise of coins filling their coffers. Sometimes I wish there would be a system collapse of food distribution in the UK, EU and USA severe enough to show these greedy parasites that they cannot eat pounds, euros or dollars or the laptops upon which they no doubt delight in displaying their silly mockery of true wealth - no matter how many zeros they see in their accounts, they cannot eat them.
I am quite certain that a book could be written from these notes, but they will do the job for us. They nail the arguments that those who wish to confuse the issues often use to justify their selective blindness, and give us a secure platform from which to form our own advocacy and research as needed.
I am going to mail all members to read this, and particularly draw the attention of those who work in allied fields. Jocelyn may have told you that we are working on a number of issues that we wish to put to you and to our brother Joshua concerning our advocacy, activities and fund-raising in the UK, so please expect to hear from us soon.
Blessings,
Your brother Louis.
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Permalink Reply by Louis Loizou on
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Permalink Reply by Makanjuola Olaseinde ARIGBEDE on -
Dear brother:
You are ever such great inspiration and I thank God that we have your services for the 'family'. As our people would say: "May you live long to serve the cause for many more years ahead", amen. You remember, my first inclination before I took to the healing art, was to be a priest, so don't be too worried about my prayers for you and all other members of the family including my dear daughter, they are very genuine, potent and sure fire!!
I will take out more time from the pressing tasks here, especially during the planting seasons, to try express myself, coming as I do from the collective wisdom of many of our peasant leaders, on more of the burning issues that farmers must speak up on and fight for.
We all send you lots of love and high respect.
Blessings.
'Seinde.
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Permalink Reply by Louis Loizou on
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Dear Seinde,
It is my pleasure to be able to arrange my time with greater priority to World Family as I hope will soon become apparent.
Remain Blessed,
Louis.
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Permalink Reply by Jocelyn Jones on -
Hi 'Seinde,
Thank you for putting the case against Jatropha so clearly and comprehensively. It will assist us in the UK to spread awareness. Many people are deluded by the pretty name "Biofuel" into thinking that it is a green alternative to oil and will counteract climate change. What they do not take into account is the devastation that will be wrought on the countries persuaded to grow such crops. Nor is it recognised that it is smallholder farming using traditionally developed seed and low levels of chemicals that is "green" and minimises climate chaos. Agribusiness is one of the worst offenders, using high levels of chemical inputs and massive quantities of water.
I am sure that you are right that Genetic Modification will be brought in under cover of Agrofuels. It is estimated that if 10% of an area is planted with GM crops the whole area will be compromised. In the case of Jatropha, cassava would be affected and, insane as this may sound, farmers of cassava could be taken to court by those owning the Jatropha seed patent should Jatropha seed find its way into their fields of cassava. It does not matter that it is the farmer of cassava who has been injured, his healthy food crop being contaminated.
In the UK we are blessed by the efforts of GMFreeze to prevent government's repeated attempts to test GM here. In Nigeria you are blessed with USMEFAN. It might be beneficial for a direct link to be formed. I will talk to them and in the meantime they can be contacted at www.gmfreeze.org
E ku ise o - blessings on your work - to stop the precious land of future generations being sold off.
Jocelyn
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