We are thinking of planting Jatropha Curcas trees & using earth worms to compost waste, the compost we get from the worms we will use for the Jatropha trees.
We are think of only planting Jatropha because of the following reasons:
1. Once planted the Jatropha trees bear for approximately 50 years.
2. We have ordered seeds from India and we intend planting these seeds and once the trees are old enough we take cuttings from them, we will supply the local people with these cuttings so that they will be able to establish small plantations. Apparently Jatropha grows easily from cuttings and the cuttings produce fruits earlier than Jatropha planted from seeds.
3. Once again we will assist the local people to establish simple hand presses that would be able to press the fruit and the oil once filtered can be used directly in there tractors and stationery engines. We will teach them to start up on normal diesel and then switch over to the Jatropha oil once the engines are warm and to switch back to diesel again before shutting off the engine so that none of the Jatropha oil is left inside the diesel pump and pipes, filter etc. of the engine. People who do not have tractors or engines can sell the oil or the fruit on the open market.
4. The compost that the worms produce for them they can use in their own plantations or gardens or sell on the open market.
5. Oh! I nearly forgot we are up in the north eastern section of South Africa (Limpopo province) the area were we are is supposed to be sub tropical but the last 4 years has been very dry and we have not received any where near our normal rainfall and this year so far is the worse. Limpopo is the poorest province in South Africa. One advantage we have is that there is large tracts of land that can be used for planting and the quality of the soil generally is not bad, now all we need is for our normal rainfall to return.
6.One of the reason we are thinking of using Jatropha is because we understand it grows in all conditions and will even grow in semi arid regions, it never goes below 8 degrees Celsius here.
7. Locally there are no sources of used vegetable oils etc. to enable us to try and make bio diesel so we will wait until we are able to produce our own oil and them learn how to convert it to bio diesel.
There are many other reasons that we are thinking of going exclusively with jatropha but you must understand that we are only going on what we have read and have no practical experience and would appreciate any input and advice from anyone as we do not want to disappoint the local people, to them it would be a tremendous boast if this plan can work.
I hope I am allowed to post such a lengthy question and that it is relevant to the list?
Greetings
BellaBok
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