Biofuel Rural Development: South India
One of the Institute’s first Energy Farming rural empowerment projects began in south India in 2003, promoting cultivation of Pongamia pinnata, a tree whose seeds produce biofuel. In collaboration with Rahul Medical Society and Roshini Biotech, the project sought to alleviate the epidemic of farmer suicide across the region, which had experienced severe drought for many years.
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Falling within the context of energy farming, the project sought to offer sustainable rural economic development through the cultivation of Pongamia as an environmentally sustainable biofuel crop. Well suited to the arid conditions of under utilized and waste lands, the Pongamia tree doesn’t require arable land to grow and, therefore, doesn’t compete with food crop production. The energy farming model is tailored to the specific needs of small and marginal farmers, and although flexible in implementation, energy farming provides a stable economic output with reliable market linkage and consistently high demand for the end product—energy.
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Rural farmers are trained in the cultivation of energy crops and given financial, material, and logistical support. The end products are bio-diesel, bio-fertilizer, and bio-gas, which can be used for transportation, to run generators for electricity production, and as cooking fuel.
Since the pilot project in 2003, these efforts have blossomed across south India, with tens of thousands of families benefiting. Today these projects have spread throughout India and Africa. For more about our efforts in the field of energy farming, and background on the project’s origins in South India, see Seeds of Hope.
Learn about the world’s first School of Energy Farming, launched at the HI Community Center in Cameroon, Africa.
BioFuel: Creating Self-Sufficiency in Rural Environments
Ishan Tigunait
September 17, 2004