Friends of the Earth International launched on Friday a new report called “Jatropha: money doesn’t grow on trees” that concludes that this crop, promoted for the production of agrofuels, is not a profitable or sustainable investment.

Pohl said: “This has a lot of implications for example for Governments or the EU Comission. The EU has a 10 per cent target for renewable fuels in transport and that is one of the reasons why agrofuels are being grown (...) I think it is key that governments and the EU Comission react.”

Pohl is researcher at Friends of the Earth Europe and was in charge of conducting the study that resulted in the publication of the new report. She worked for a year in this report.

Previous studies by Friends of the Earth Europe on land grabbing in Africa had shown that several investments on jatropha in the continent had not produced the expected economic results. We thought that it would be good to analyze this in detail and see if jatropha was economically viable or not, said Pohl.

This is how the interest for an economic assessment of the production of jatropha for agrofuels was born, and they added environmental aspects and elements related to competition with lands to produce food.

Jatropha, a crop grown in several continents, has been presented at international level as an investment opportunity, with crops growing on “marginal lands”, that need a few additional resources, and as a solution to climate change (agrofuels).

Scientific studies show that the economic promises of jatropha are being highly exaggerated, warns the member of Friends of the Earth Europe. She explained that there are studies that show that jatropha is not profitable when grown on marginal lands, and that it is even extremely difficult to generate profits in fertile lands. She added that this crop needs large amounts of water, fertilizer and pesticides.

Several international companies have abandoned the jatropha business because of the poor economic results. The Friends of the Earth report includes some examples of this. An interesting case is that of BP oil company, which pulled out from a consortium with British D1 Oils to produce biodiesel from jatropha.

Pohl believes that the promotion of this grain as a profitable crop is a result of the fact that it is “easy to sell” because investment companies insist that it is grown in marginal lands and that it does not displace food crops. This was rejected by the researcher, who made reference to the fact that jatropha is planted in fertile lands in several regions of Africa, for instance, and that it does compete with lands for food production.

This issue, in a continent where hunger is commonplace, is extremely worrying. Pohl stated that in countries such as Mozambique, Ghana and Tanzania jatropha is grown in fertile lands. The same happens in India, for instance. In any case, whether in fertile or the so-called “marginal” lands, the production of jatropha for agrofuels competes with lands to produce food, regrets the author of the study.

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