Talkin' Weed with the NY Times

According to the NY Times, a plant called jatropha is being hailed by scientists and policy makers as a potentially ideal source of biofuel, a plant that can grow in marginal soil or beside food crops, that does not require a lot of fertilizer and yields many times as much biofuel per acre planted as corn and many other potential biofuels.

As luck would have it, this plant is already being massively grown in Mali, one of the poorest nations on earth, on marginal quality land. And a Dutch entrepreneur, Hugo Verkuijl, has started a company with the backing of investors and assistance from the Dutch government, to produce biodiesel from jatropha seeds.

Mr. Verkuijl, 39, an economist who has worked for nonprofit groups, is part of a new breed of entrepreneurs who are marrying the traditional aims of aid groups working in Africa with a capitalist ethos they hope will bring longevity to their efforts.

“An aid project will live or die by its funders,” Mr. Verkuijl said, but “a business has momentum and a motive to keep going, even if its founders move on.”

Well said and well done Mr. Verkuijl, kudos to you. Sounds like a great project

However gentle readers, this being in the NY Times, you must be waiting for the other shoe to drop and here it goes:

Even if jatropha proves a success in Mali, it is still not without risks. If farmers come to see it as more valuable than food crops, they could cripple the country’s food production.

This is why I blog, people, this is the good stuff. What in the world could Lydia Polgreen mean by the above quote? If jatropha is less valuable than food crops, then the farmers won't drop food crops. If jatropha is only more valuable than food crops with some kind of production subsidy then there may be temporary trouble when/if the subsidy stops.

But in general Lydia, if farmers can earn more by planting jatropha than subsistence farming, BY ALL MEANS THEY SHOULD DO SO!! They will get this stuff economists call "money" and they can use it in "trade" to acquire food, clothes, subscriptions to the Times, you name it. If the jatropha is indeed more valuable they can buy all the crops they would have grown and have money left over.

But maybe, just to be sure, we should have the government of Mali, or better yet the UN set quotas for the production of all crops and commodities in Mali.