jatropha=solution?

You don't have to look far to view the quickly-evolving alternative fuel industry: a group in Fort Myers is cultivating the jatropha plant for its oil-bearing fruit.

Jatropha has gained popularity worldwide for its inedible yet oil-yielding fruit used to power diesel engines, and ability to grow mostly anywhere in climates such as Southwest Florida.

Lee County Agriculture Extension Agent Roy Beckford took note of its potential beginning about two years ago, and his interest garnered the attention of at least one jatropha investor, Washington, D.C.- based attorney Paul Dalton and his company, My Dream Fuels LLC.

"(Jatropha) is just one candidate for solving the energy crisis," Beckford said.

Dalton donated 1,500 jatropha seedlings for the county to study earlier this year. Now he's planning a $6 million facility for cloning and processing the plant's golf-ball sized fruit - which is poisonous to eat - at the Fort Myers State Farmers' Market on Edison Avenue.

His plan includes farmers from around the region growing the crop, and bringing it to his facility to be turned into bio-diesel fuel.

COURTESY GRAPHIC Jatropha is cultivated in warm temperate climates (shown in green) throughout the world. Beckford said jatropha plants produce oil more cheaply and abundantly than the other leading crops, soy and corn. It could also be a major boon to area farmers looking to supplement their income in a down economy or complement struggling citrus crops, to the tune of $2,000 per acre.

"We're trying to create a whole new industry in Florida," said Dream Fuels chief grower Mark Dalton, Paul Dalton's brother. He was in LaBelle last week, where Dream Fuel is growing 800,000 jatropha plants.

Dalton said using the plants for oil is a relatively new concept, which began only four years ago in countries such as India and China; and it quickly took root in Africa, Brazil and parts of the United States as well.

Besides oil, the plant has at times been used in a variety of ways, from burning the seeds as candles, to medicinal purposes, like relief from constipation - that use earned the fruit one of its nicknames, the "physic nut."

And there are added benefits, Beckford said. For example, every acre of jatropha sucks up four tons of carbon dioxide per year out of the atmosphere, through the process of photosynthesis. That helps clean up the environmental mess made by traditional petroleum or fossil-based fuels, even as it creates a new, green source of energy.

With the idea of alternative fuels becoming more popular, Beckford has recently been getting up to 60 phone calls per week about jatropha.

"Prices are going up and people are becoming aware of how poisonous (traditional fuels) are and how they pollute the environment," he said.

Jatropha has been written about for its biodiesel potential in the Wall Street Journal and featured on CNN, CBS and in local newspapers. A New Zealand airline using jatropha diesel to refuel their engines will even receive mention during this year's Olympic Games.

But Beckford, who attended a worldwide conference for jatropha last month in Miami, added that his job now is to "get past the hype" and figure out the realities and economics of growing the plant in Southwest Florida. As it turns out, a variety called jatropha curcas does particularly well in the region, even in sandy soil, in the heat or in the shade, wet or dry, and requires little fertilizer.

"There are still some kinks to be worked out," Beckford said. "This is not a solution (to the energy crisis) but it is one candidate I think is very, very valuable."

The plant is now grown on test sites around Southwest Florida, including in Lee County at the Farmers Market and on Buckingham Road. It's grown on at least 20 acres in LaBelle and over 200 acres in Arcadia. Other farmers in Florida, with total land of over 500,000 acres, have expressed interest.

Jatropha has been proven to yield over 400 gallons of oil per acre in the wild, Beckford said. Soy, even in its developed, commercialized form, produces only 50 gallons per acre and corn even less. And with the benefits of cloning and use of specific varietals, the potential is even greater.

"It is still undomesticated," Beckford said. "So, the potential exists for us to double that or triple that (amount of oil produced) with research, so we come up with a high yielding tree."

It takes 12 to 18 months for the plants, like the ones recently put in the ground at the Farmer's Market, to begin producing fruit - Dream Fuels plans to begin its cloning and processing operation there during that time frame.

And it takes at least three years for the plant to reach maturity. After that, it will produce fruit for 30 to 50 years, Beckford said.

Fort Myers State Farmers' Market Senior Market Manager Lee Crews, said the patch of land in the back of the market by the railroad tracks, where the baby jatropha plants exist now, was previously unused ground.

After they begin to produce fruit, he plans to use the biodiesel fuel to power a golf cart for getting around the market.

Beckford noted that while most people generally think of "diesel" as a fuel, it is actually the name of an engine that was originally used with fuels produced from living plants.

The diesel engine, created by German inventor Rudolph Diesel in the late 1800s, was first run with peanut oil.

"His idea was that regardless of where you are in the world, you could use it," Beckford said. "A diesel engine is really, really powerful. It gives you a great bang for your buck. So if you were in Europe and you had rapeseed, you could use that. If you were in Malaysia, you could use coconut oil. If you were in Georgia, you could use peanut oil.

"But of course, right after he developed the engine, we realized we could pump crude oil and petroleum out of the ground at a significantly cheaper rate, so it took over."

With jatropha, Beckford said, "We're basically making a 360 degree turn. We're coming right back to the point we were at 100 years ago."