By Lydia Namubiru

THE fuel prices continue to skyrocket and it seems like nothing can be done about it. However, Eirik Trondsen, a Norwegian investor in renewable energy, believes the solution to the problem is currently growing wild, neglected in the fields countrywide.

It is the jatropha carcus, a plant that is coming to be known as the diesel plant.

Jatropha (kiloowa in Luganda), which is commonly used in the countryside as a hedge and/or support for vanilla plants, can be used to make fuel for lamps, cooking and running machines like cars and generators.

Trondsen says the idea is actually not new. During the 1970s, people in eastern Uganda used jatropha seeds for domestic lighting.
They used to stick them onto a rod that acted as a wick. When you light the end of the rod, it burns just as a wick dipped in paraffin does, Trondsen says.

The earning potential of jatropha
It is estimated that jatropha?s earning potential will increase as fuel prices continue to rise and people seek alternative fuels.
A mature jatropha tree can produce three kilos of seeds annually and continues to yield for up to 40 years. An acre of land can take up to 1,000 trees of jatropha.

Today three Ugandan firms buy jatropha seeds. These are Energy Agriculture Uganda in Mukono, VEDCO Uganda in Luweero and Royal Van Zanten, a flower farm. In 2007, the flower farm bought 9,000kg of jatropha seeds from Mukono farmers at sh150 a kilo.

We are now buying a kilo at sh300, says Madgalene Mucite, a jatropha farmer in Mukono, who is also the operations manager for Energy Agriculture.

This implies that from an acre of land, one can earn about sh900,000 annually for 40 years. More investors are entering the market and as production of biofuel from jatropha begins, its price is likely to rise. We are not producing any fuel from jatropha because we do not have enough supply of seeds yet, Mucite explains.

Energy Agriculture is now promoting the growth of jatropha among farmers especially in Mukono and Moyo districts. Jatropha takes about a year to mature.

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Mucite quit the corporate rat race for farming
New Vision (Uganda), Friday, 9th January, 2009


Mucite in her jatropha garden

Deep down, most of us believe that we would be better off if we quit our 9-5 jobs and did own businesses, only if we could pluck the courage. LYDIA NAMUBIRU talked to Magdalence Mucite, who has taken that plunge

MAGDALENE Mucite had never dreamt of becoming a farmer. However, after being an employee since 1999, the 34-year-old resigned in March 2008 and is now a farmer.

After getting her business administration degree in 1999, she found her way into the working class. However, it struck her that there was some money to be made in the agriculture sector. "Just to make extra income, we used to travel upcountry, buy produce from farmers and sell it to traders in Kampala," she remembers. With a group of male friends, they used to buy maize, hire a truck to transport it to Kampala where they resold it at a profit. "There made a lot of money. I bought my home in Mutungo using that money," Mucite reminisces.

Then, in 2002, the corporate bug bit her too. "I got a job with Mastermind and was posted to Kasese," she says. Her produce business stopped. Even when she moved back to Kampala, she could not get back into it. "My job was demanding, but it also paid well," she justifies. However, management changes in Mastermind woke her up to the need to have something to fall back on. "The frequent changes in management made us feel insecure about our jobs.

A friend suggested that I start a side business," she recalls. She loved the idea but was uncertain about what venture she could engage in. She said she could not go back into produce because it required travelling upcountry every weekend and she did not have the time.

The same friends pointed out that she could start a poultry project at her home in Mutungo. "I started with only 300 birds. I then moved on to 500, 800 and currently I have 1,200 birds," she says. The money from selling eggs was a big boost to her income. "I was never broke," Mucite recalls.

She also bought her first car in 2005 using money from her poultry project. "Every morning, I left home with at 6:00am carrying trays of eggs in the car boot. I would sell them to traders in Nakasero before going to office. I always got to office before 7:00am," Mucite says. At her home, she also zero grazed a cow for milk. For about two years, she successfully juggled farming with her job.

In December 2006, she met a group of people who changed her life. While visiting a friend, Eirik Trondsen, in Kenya, he went with him to a business meeting with a group of his fellow Norwegians. "They talked about this plant called jatropha and how is can be used to make fuel for lamps, cooking and cars," Mucite recalls.

She was excited about it from the start, but she was sceptical. It was after all the first time she was hearing of or even seeing the plant that the rest seemed to believe was a money mint. They asked her to join their company Energy Africa but she declined.

Nevertheless, the idea continued to stir up some excitement in her. When she came back to Uganda, she started to look for a piece of land to experiment with jatropha. Interestingly, her jatropha plants worked out even better than those she had seen in Kenya. When Trondsen came to see it, he was amazed. He suggested that they start a company to that will grow to locally produce diesel from the plants. With her five-acre piece of land and existing project as her contribution, she now has a 25% stake in Energy Agriculture Uganda Limited. She resigned from her Mastermind job to concentrate on the new company. "We are promoting jatropha among local farmers especially in Moyo. When we have enough out-growers to supply the quantity of seed we need, we shall start producing fuel," she says.

Will it work? "Time will tell but I?m confident it will," she enthuses. Meanwhile, Mucite has moved her home farming projects into a small mixed farm in Mukono near the jatropha project. She has poultry, rabbits, a cow and a piggery project there. She has taken the plunge and is determined to make it work.

Growing jatropha
Jatropha is amazingly easy to grow because it does not need a lot of care. It can also survive in arid areas where most plants do not. More so, wild animals do not eat jatropha and it is disease-resistant.

Mucite says one does not even need a finely ploughed field to begin planting jatropha unless one intends to inter-crop it with more sensitive crops.

One can plant cuttings from jatropha trees the same way cassava is planted. A farmer can also buy seedlings from commercial nursery beds.

When planting, give the crops a spacing of about two by three metres. Weeding is done once in a while to stop the weeds from growing higher than the jatropha, Mucite tips.

She emphasises the importance of pruning the jatropha trees saying it increases yields and eases harvesting. Mucite warns that sometimes the crop can be attacked by termites.

She advises that termites can be sprayed with common insecticides. She says it costs her about sh60,000 a month to maintain her five-acre farm of jatropha trees. Farmers can buy jatropha cuttings and seedlings from Kayunga Road.

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