Indian government is promoting on large scale jatropha cultivation for biodiesel...
It's targeting 13.5 million hectares of "wasteland” for jatropha cultivation by 2012...
Its success comes from the fact that farmers can grow it without irrigation on poor soils in semi arid regions...
Also its oil yield is from 1 to 10(in the best conditions) tonnes per hectare...
Also it would create forests where there is not vegetation...
The problem is that it needs a lot of hours of labour (harvest) that would increase oil price in our nations...
What do you think about?

Aubi7,
The oil prices are rising rapidly. Vegetable oils and Tallow prices are following the price of petroleum oils as they are an alternative fuel feedstock.
Jatropha does require manual harvesting, but it won't be long before someone develops a mechanical harvester for Jatropha. Plantations will probably need to be laid out to comply with the harvester requirements, but that can easily be done.
Many countries are lacking in trees which were harvested for firewood/lumber in the past. This will revegetate (albeit a monoculture) and possibly improve the climatic conditions surrounding the plantations.

I hope so.

Tony

i think it will be worked out if it is economically feasable early in the picture. there would be a lot of costs before someone here would be able to buy the oil from a crop there.i guess that it will depend upon how much a company here is willing to pay for its feedstock.
i mean the main reaosn that oil comes from the ground and not from the crops is that it was cheaper to pump it up. without thoguht about the environmental problems we see today. who knows maybe in the future this will be factored in. for example one may be able to get carbon credits on new crops seeing as there is a recycling of carbon dioxide in this way.
mankind has grown and propered on relatively cheap oil at a detriment to the environment.

one thing more, if we look at the early days when oil from the ground was cheaper and easier than growing fuel and now we say that fuel prices are going up we may think that these things can compete on a more level field. like if fuel rises by another 20 cents per liter..it will help.
especially in countries where it is cheap enough to grow it still.

1 to 10 tonnes per hectare sounds like a heck of a lot though. i thought if something produced more than 1.5 it had a good chance. are you sure thats 10 tonnes of oil proven under best general growing conditions?

Jatropha is a plant similar to olive so the harvest is difficult to mechanize...
Also it needs more harvests during the year because jatropha seeds don't ripen in the same period...
Today olive oil costs around 10 $/kg because of the required labour...
This is a real problem...

Some experts say this...
Probably with irrigation and fertilizers a land can grow 10 tonnes of jatropha oil per hectare...

Jatropha has a good potential but only in the poorer parts of the world like India, Africa and maybe Mexico, places where a peasant can be given a plot of land, given a number of plants and he is responsable for growing and tending the plants to their first fruiting. He is then able to harvest the fruits of his own labour and earn an income for himself, his family and his village.

The big corporates who are planting millions of acres are going to be paying labourers slave labour rates to work all day harvesting the fruits.

Palm oil is destroying the rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia whilst Indian labourers are being abused for the sake of cheap labour - all in the name of biodiesel.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a movement to place embargoes on palm oi because of its ecological profile and I believe Jatropha may face similar action because of it's social profile.

__________________
Slippery
Small steps taken one at a time.

There are plenty of mechanical olive harvester on the market.
The only problem with mechanization is that in old plantations particularly in Europe, the spacing between trees was done with manual labor in mind and the machines don't fit between the rows.
Plantations designed for mechanical harvest have no problems at all.

The world is saved, Fox news has discovered jatropha

I like the 'quick solution' idea

Facing decimating blights and rising fuel prices, farmers in Florida are looking to a tropical plant rarely grown in America as their newest cash crop: Jatropha curcas, the hottest biofuel buzzword on the market.
“When I touch this plant and feel this plant the first thing that comes to my mind is yield and cash flow,” said Bryan Beer, a Jatropha farmer.
Beer is banking on a lot of cash flow from his first crop of what some experts see as the latest and greatest source of biofuel.


Some farmers think Jatropha may offer a hope of a quick solution. “It grows to full maturity within five years and you can get a commercial harvest within one to two years,” said Dalton.
For now, India and China are “way ahead of the United States in terms of production,” said Beckford, who estimates that less than 100 acres of the plant are currently growing in America. “India has probably more than eight million acres right now,” he said.

Via - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,367541,00.html

Back in 2005 I wanted to grow a crop of Jatropha at an Aboriginal settlement in North West WA. I thought it was a great idea as it grows in Semi-Arid areas, give the locals a cash crop and I would buy the seeds off them for the oil. At least it would be worth doing trials anyway....but.....guess what.....the Ag Dept told me it would be illegal for me to continue as its a classified plant. It's ok it seems in some other States and many other countries but not here in WA.
It was disappointing but just makes me wonder how far we have to slide down the other side of the Peak Oil curve before we realize we might just need non-edible oil energy crops.