Annual Report: CIRAD 2008
| Ecological intensification | Biomass energy | Food safety | Animal health | Public policy | |
| Agriculture and society |
Analysing conditions for the development of bio-energies and ensuring that they benefit people in developing countries
Do currently spotlighted bio-energies represent a new opportunity for agriculture or a competitive risk for food production? Fuel bills of energy-dependent developing countries could be reduced by adopting biofuels to replace petroleum products, while also developing income-generating subsectors in rural areas. However, developing agricultural systems devoted to energy production will give rise to new constraints and tensions. Is this a development opportunity for developing countries or a further risk of impoverishment associated with a potential reduction in traditional subsistence crops?
Generating fuel from lignocellulosic biomass–wood and crop residue such as straw, bagasse and rice husks–is by far the main source of energy with a promising future, but several other plants already have a real agronomic potential, eg physic nut, cotton, sunflower, groundnut, soybean, sorghum (stems), sugar-cane, etc. In West Africa, for instance, around a third of all cotton seeds produced are not processed, especially by smallholders who are unable to utilize all of the cotton seed they harvest. This by-product is a highly interesting raw material for local production of energy for generating electricity, motive power and heat, especially in Burkina Faso, a country that now wishes to implement energy policies to boost its independence and make more effective use of fuels. Unused seeds could thus produce oil to replace the wood used by small-scale oil mills or the distillate diesel oil (DDO) used by bakeries. CIRAD also coordinated a large-scale multidisciplinary study on the potential of biofuels in Burkina Faso—a country that is highly dependent on hydrocarbon fuel imports for transportation and motive and electric power production.
Great hope is thus being placed on biofuels. To fulfil these expectations, it is essential to come up with scientifically relevant analyses to provide a basis for drawing up sustainable policies and determining relevant focuses of research in this broad field within specific agricultural, ecological and economic settings. However, energy production systems have to be studied in the rural community framework within which they operate. Plant fuels have long been the focus of research at CIRAD, which sets up research programmes to deal with technical (new varietal ideotypes, maximization of fuel biomass production, etc.), social (land use, land management, subsector and market restructuring, changes in conventional uses, impact on diets, etc.), environmental (energy efficiency of itineraries, eco-balances, farming practices, etc.) and economic (distribution of income to different itinerary stages, comparison with other cropping systems, impact on farmers’ income, food/fuel competition, threats to food crops, etc.) issues.