Few
weeks ago, I was reading an article in Al-Jazeera about the oil wells in Iraq,
which until then I had heard was the primary reason for US’s invasion of Iraq. Saddam
was just an excuse. What I found is that majority of the oil wells were owned
by PETRONAS, Shell, British Petroleum and I believe that one of them belonged
to China, as well. What one could infer is very evident. India or any other
developing country in the world had no say in it. This shows the power that
nations such asthe US have.
I
am convinced that if war arises again in Iran, it will be solely for oil. (This
is nothing new). What can India do if such things continue to happen? This can
be a great threat to our country as we already import about 80% of crude oil.
It just points out the underlying facts that we would become more dependent on
the super powers and therefore, slowly end up dancing to their tunes.
When
I returned to Coimbatore after two months of internship at CNN-IBN in
Bangalore, I got an opportunity to visit
Zaheerabad, a town about 100 Kms to the west of Hyderabad in Medak district.A
group of people, who were in growing plants for generating bio-diesel, had set
up a farm in the area.
I
took up the idea as I was free and this seemed pretty interesting to me as the possibility
of oil wars was already poking me. When I went there, I could gauge that India
has the potential to generate oil in large scale and slowly move away from near
total dependence. Let me explain this further.
Tree
Oils India Limited (TOIL) was setup in 2003 by a few men, who were passionate
in generating oil from agriculture, which roots from their keen interest in
agriculture. SrinivasGhatty, the man behind the setup, had been a bank employee
in the past and had always been keen about agriculture and doing something
green. With the help of his friends and few NRI investors, he setup TOIL with
about 120 acres of land in the town of Zaheerabad, the land which is infertile an
is therefore, suitable only for growing non-edible oil seeds.
I
had a very simple question in my mind. What is the connection between
bio-diesel and a farm in an arid area? I came to know that we can generate
Bio-Diesel from any vegetable oil. Yes, it’s indeed true, but we need to
differentiate edible and non-edible oils. As generating Bio-diesel from edible
oils will increase the cost of our food, large-scale plantation of non-edible
oil bearing plants could be trouble-free. (Please read the debate going on the
topic of producing diesel from corn in the US. You may connect with it.)
By
looking at this plantation in Zaheerabad, we can learn a lot of things. The
seeds that they sow here were mainly of two plants:jatropha(Jatrophacurcas) and pongamia(Milletiapinnata).These
seeds germinate in an infertile soil. Therefore, the question whether we are
compromising on our food or not does not arise at all. In short, these trees
can be grown at places where the soil is infertile and unsuitable for
agriculture.
At
the farms of TOIL, with 120 acres of land, the company has created an
absolutely self-sufficient living support for their resident workers. Out of
the entire land, 40 acres was initially used to grow Jatropha, 60 acres for
Pongamia, 15 acres for Amla trees and the last five for other oil bearing
seeds.
The 40 acres of Jatropha has been cut down to
15 acres as Jatropha hasn’t been able to withstand the hot summers. They are also vulnerable to pests, scanty rainfall
in the recent past and so on.
The
other crop that they have been growing at a large scale is Pongamia. The benefit
of growing Pongamia is that it can sustain heat and is less prone to pest
attacks. Therefore, a large scale production of Pongamia across the country’s
barren lands that are unsuitable for agriculture and are infertile may yield us
Bio-Diesel in large quantities that can substitute petro-fuels.
The
oil that is extracted from the seeds of the above trees is then taken to a
Trans-esterification plant. The process of converting any vegetable oil into
Bio-Diesel is called trans-esterification.
This is exactly how Bio-Diesel is generated.
The
percentage of oil in the seeds varies drastically; pongamia can have 39% oil
content whereas Jatropha can have about 47%. Though jatropa carries more oil,
it is very difficult to maintain the growth of that plant. To increase the
percentage of oil, get higher yield and reduce the gestation period of the
plant, TOIL has made a tie-up with the Hyderabad University where several
agricultural scientists are working on genetically modifying seeds by virtue of
which they can produce higher yield in a lesser period of time.
The
best thing that I found during my stay at their farm was the sincerity of the
locals. They have been instrumental in making the agenda of the company
successful until today. The entire farm seemed totally independent for its
survival as I could see the inmates running their generator in times of power
cuts with the edible oils, which is magnificent. The farm also has around 25
milking cows with in-house Bio-gas generating plant that is used for cooking by
the inmates. The farm shelters around 7 families of which the husband and wife
work in the farm and their children go to the nearby school. The farm is
entirely managed by a localite named Kishan Reddy. He has a team of two young
boys, who have done their diploma in agricultural engineering; Rabbani, the
researcher; few labour supervisors and over a dozen farm labourers.
Their
dedication and hard-work in making the farm work efficiently, is highly
commendable. This is just the beginning and the future looks quite bright. We
need to carry out such things on a larger scale with more inputs from the
market and generating income from this, which would eventually help in a large
way in making India independent for its own energy requirements.
UN
millennium goals
If
you look at the millennium development goals of the United Nations, one can
infer that the world is looking for sustainable sources of energy. According to
their reports, one out of five living in the world doesn’t have access to
electricity and also twice the number that accounts to three billion people use
charcoal, coal, wood and animal waste materials for their cooking. The United
Nations, this year, have taken up the theme of sustainable energy and
eradicating energy poverty in the world.
Talking
about energy poverty, I remember seeing a generator in the village that was run
on these edible oils. They just took the oil and tried it on the generator and
it did work. The point here is that these oils are useful in a multitude of
purposes.
In
their course of planting and growth of these plants, they faced several issues.
Few were to do with insects affecting the plant and few were about the climate
at that place, which was very hot for Jatropha to grow. When I went there, I
was accompanied by Arunwho has been working on Effective Microorganisms at
Amrita. He was called there to initiate the use of EM as few plants of Pongamia
had some sort of a disease. I have seen the natural way of curing plants really
effective at the Ettimadai campus. Many trees, especially Mango showed
significant growth when EM was spread on it.
Travel:
This
was the best part.. We boarded a Volvo bus from Ettimadai and settled on the
first row. The drive in a Volvo needn’t be told. It’s incomparable to any other
bus we have in India not even Mercedes. The driver seemed to be in a hurry as
usual. As the road progressed, the driver started taking up speed and was
cruising at around 115 KMPH. When Arun got up to take something from his bag,
the driver pushed the brake hard to avoid an accident; I didn’t even get the
time to hold him and I saw him falling on his back hard on the bus’ dashboard.
The force with which he fell was tremendous and the 69 year-old man got up on
his own and said he was fine. I initially thought he was joking, but later he
really was fine. I was astonished to see his level of fitness at this age. I
myself am not so fit. The bus then followed ghat sections after Krishnagiri and
dropped us in Hyderabad within fifteen hours.
This
was my first visit to Hyderabad. I got down at Miapur, as instructed by
Mr.Rajeshwar, who had come to pick us up. Zaheerabad was around 120 Kilometres
from that spot; the roads weren’t great even though it was National Highway.
The road followed to Pune and had only two lanes. On the outskirts of
Hyderabad, I could see a large number of industries with waste spilled all
over. We reached Zaheerabad town and boarded a Hotel where our host booked us a
room.
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