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The best things about our biofuel crops
AS I SEE IT By Neal Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
February 8, 2008
Today is the second day of the year of the rat. Happy New Year, Mr. Speaker. Happy New Year also to 174 congressmen. Have you washed your hands of the blood of your former leader?
A Chinese-Filipino said farmers should not be afraid of rats because they bring good luck and prosperity. That may be true of the rats in the farms but not of the two-legged rats in the city, specifically those inhabiting the House of Representatives. They may be prosperous themselves but they bring poverty to the people around them. Look at the people living around the Batasan, the habitat of the two-legged rats: they are mostly squatters who eke out a living scavenging from the nearby garbage dump.
The city rats are very deadly, cannibalistic even. Look at what they did to a fellow rat named Jose de Venecia.
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There is irony in the ouster from the speakership of Rep. Jose de Venecia of Pangasinan province. He had tried to use the House, unconstitutionally and immorally, to change the Constitution to shift to a unicameral parliamentary system of government. In this system, the legislature and the executive department are combined and there is no Senate. The members of Parliament, the counterpart of the present congressmen, are also the Cabinet members.
De Venecia wants to be chief executive of the Philippines. He ran for president but was soundly defeated by a movie actor. Many speakers ran for president but none of them were able to transfer immediately from the House of Representatives to Malacañang. So De Venecia thought of becoming chief executive via the backdoor. In a parliamentary government, he can run for MP (Member of Parliament) of his district. Then he can convince his fellow MPs to elect him as prime minister (PM). With his expertise and experience in carving a coalition of his fellow congressmen from different parties, he thought he could easily put up a coalition of MPs to elect him as PM. He confidently thought congressmen were putty in his hands. He was wrong.
As recent events have shown, congressmen march to the beat of a drum different from what the Speaker is beating. They march to the drum beaten by the drumbeater in Malacañang, particularly when the drumbeats are accompanied by the tinkling of lucre.
Now if what they did to De Venecia can happen in a bicameral system where the legislature is supposed to be independent of the executive, imagine what can happen in a unicameral parliamentary system where the legislature and the executive department are combined.
Speaker Prospero Nograles should remember that when his colleagues clamor again for Charter change. He said he won't push for it, but what if the Arroyo brothers, Mikey and Dato, tell him they want it? Can he say no to them?
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At the Kapihan sa Manila media forum last Monday, Sen. Migz Zubiri, father of the Biofuels Act, defended the logic behind the law. We can't always be at the mercy of the oil-exporting countries, he said. We should do something to protect ourselves, and that is by producing our own fuel from agriculture products.
The cold water on biofuels was doused by a Nobel laureate who said that land devoted to food crops may be used to grow crops for biofuel, resulting in hunger.
However, the Philippines is different from other countries that produce biofuel from corn and soybeans, Zubiri said. Biofuel will be a boon to farmers without affecting food production, he explained. For example, the world demand for sugar is dropping; prices are at an all-time low. Sugar farmers and centrals can hardly make a profit from their produce. If the excess sugar is processed into ethanol, it not only provides another fuel source that is non-polluting but also increases the income of the farmers and centrals.
World demand for sugar will continue to plummet, Zubiri said, because of health reasons. More and more uses for sugar substitutes are being done, and another use for sugar has to be found. That is ethanol.
The same is true of coconut oil. Copra and sugar used to be the top exports of the Philippines. Not anymore. Because of increasing health awareness, demand for coconut oil is waning. Now the price of coconut oil is very low and coconut farmers are the poorest agricultural workers. So little income is derived from coconut that farmers are cutting down their coconut trees. But if the excess coconut oil is processed into biodiesel, not only will there be a new demand for coconut oil but its price will rise.
Then there is jatropha, or “tuba-tuba,” whose seeds yield oil that can be processed into biofuel. So-called experts said planting huge tracts of land to jatropha would deny these lands from food crops. Not so. The good thing about jatropha is that it thrives in marginal land of which we have plenty. These lands are now idle, unfit for food crops. With jatropha, they can be put to use to produce biofuel.
Then there is “malunggay,” the new wonder tree, Zubiri continued. The malunggay leaves are very nutritious and its seeds yield oil that can be used as biofuel. One of our biggest problems is deforestation; many of our mountains are denuded which result in floods and mudslides. Why not reforest them with malunggay, which is easy to grow? Seedlings grow not only from seeds but from cuttings.
The good thing about malunggay as a reforestation tree is that it has soft wood. It is not good as construction material. Our forests are being cut for the wood. Malunggay won't provide wood for construction but it would hold the soil together so it is not washed away by rain. Moreover, it is self-propagating. Its elongated pods pop open and scatter seeds, which grow readily at the first rain.
Thus, we get a triple bonus: We reforest the mountains, we provide people with nutritious food, and we produce fuel.
