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I have just been inspired to write this with an email from Dar attaching a PowerPoint presentation on ‘BioPower’
as developed by a team led by Bellum Reddy and Mark Winslow. So now I know that they now have a new
website, named BioPower of course, a subdomain of icrisat.org.
I say sweet sorghum is the crop that launched a thousand sweets because it has been cultivated for at least 2000
years in Africa (Sandhill Farm) and at least 300 years in the United States alone, to where it was introduced in the
17 th century (‘Growing a Nation’). This crop makes excellent or high-quality molasses no matter where you grow
the plant (Paul L Mask & William C Morris, University of Tennessee); it gives you a truly delicious syrup (Ken
Christison & Keith Kinney, Hercules Engines); it is called a ‘Life Saver’ because you get more (in yield) from less
(in cost of growing) compared to other crops (Janqui Zou & Yuxue Shi, Sorghum Institute of LAAS).
It’s clear, ‘BioPower is pro-poor,’ says the ICRISAT PowerPoint presentation, sent to me by Dar in pdf form. How?
Reading the pdf and with what I know while focusing on sweet sorghum, I understand that:
1. BioPower crops are those poor
farmers can grow. That is to say, the
seeds are inexpensive. Compared to
hybrid rice, sweet sorghum seeds are
cheap.
2. Biofuel crops produce not only fuel but
also food and feed. Thus, rice
produces food and feed but not the
added value of ethanol that comes
from processing corn, sugarcane or
sweet sorghum.
3. They increase productivity so that food
rides the biofuel wave. Some people
argue that biofuel crops count out the
food crops because food becomes
fuel instead, as happens with corn (Yankees’ choice for biofuel) and sugarcane (Brazilians’ choice). Not with
sweet sorghum; that’s why I like sweet sorghum.
4. Non-food biofuel crops grow in wastelands. The corollary argument to that in #3 is that biofuel crops crowd
out the food crops because they supplant them in real space. That is avoided with sweet sorghum, which
grows well in bad soils. Food biofuel crops such as sweet sorghum also grow in wastelands.
5. As feedstock, biofuel crops increase income. Also, since sweet sorghum is cheaper to grow, the grains and
fodder can be used by poor farmers to raise livestock, boosting their farm income.
BioPower To The People!