Word: plantes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...government told the farmers, however, that jatropha seeds can be pressed to make biofuel and that scientists believed the plant's seeds contained more oil than other biofuel crops. Even better, the government said, jatropha needed little tending. All you had to do was stick it in the ground and watch it grow. Best of all for Kibwezi, a place that's frequently stricken by drought, scientists believed that the plant thrived on arid land. Convinced they could reap large profits from the plant in the global craze for alternative energy sources, hundreds of farmers turned over acres of their...
...Kenya isn't the only country that's gotten caught up in the excitement over jatropha. Last December, an Air New Zealand jet powered by a jatropha/kerosene blend made a successful test flight. China, Brazil and even Myanmar have promoted it heavily, sometimes forcing farmers to plant it. In India, jatropha has been planted on hundreds of thousands of acres of land. But, like the farmers in Kibwezi, farmers in these other countries have also experienced problems growing the plant. In India, for example, a test project at several agricultural colleges produced seed yields of only 200 grams per plant...
...absence of reliable information, the farmers in Kenya were fed mistruths about the plant and its biofuel potential by nongovernmental organizations and the government, which got much of their information from the Internet. The farmers said they were persuaded to buy so-called "certified" jatropha seeds, which were said to grow in tough conditions. They were also told they would be given advice on how to plant their fields and that once the plants began to produce seeds, agricultural officials would buy them at prices upwards of 1,000 shillings ($13) per kilogram. Farmers were also told that demand would...
...none of those promises came to be. "It was a combination of international hype and local organizations who were ... selling seeds at very high prices claiming that they were special certified seeds when really they were just seeds collected from old trees in the wild," Newman says. The plants also did not do well in arid conditions. "[The plant] was more fragile, especially in its initial establishment phase, than we thought," says Jan Van den Abeele, executive director for Better Globe Forestry, a Nairobi-based group that studies optimal conditions for planting trees in dry areas. And many farmers...
...Farmers in Kibwezi quickly realized that they would have to throw out the rulebook to make their crops grow. Boniface Muoki's jatropha plants look like they're doing well - they're covered with thick green leaves and fruit. But Muoki says he did almost nothing the government experts told him to Do - instead, he planted the seedlings in meter-deep holes so that they would collect more rainwater and he tends the plants fastidiously. "It's the farmer who knows best," Muoki says. "At this point, I know more about jatropha than most anyone because...