Dehradun, 11 Dec 2004
Uttaranchal government starts off with a unique project to uplift the living standards of its farmers.
Each farmer whose living standard is Below Poverty Line is being given Jatropha saplings for planting in their land.
“The main aim is to uplift BPL families and we want to uplift 50,000 BPL families to APL in four years time. And the biggest aimis to produce bio diesel,” said Atul Lohia, Secretary, Uttaranchal Biofuel Board.
Scientists in India had earlier extracted fuel grade oil, named as “Bio Diesel”, from Jatropha plants to prepare bio-diesel to run vehicles.
Sohan Singh, a farmer who has been given the saplings strongly believes that by cultivating Jatropha trees, which yield seeds that give one fourth weight of a processed oil equivalent to diesel, would help the farmers to overcome the financial crisis.
Also their barren land would become fertile.
“The farmers are facing two kinds of problems, one is that the soil which is not fertile can be made fertile, plus we are getting money both for sowing the seeds and also we get seventy percent will be ours after the plant bears fruit,” said Sohan Singh.
“Previously it was barren mountains only but now that I can plant Jatropha, we hope that we will be in a better position from then onwards,” said Mehar Singh, another farmer.
According to Nav Prabhat, Forest Minister “The planning Commission had made the project and the central government has decided that upto 25 percent of bio fuel will be mixed to our fuel by increasing the percentage by five to ten percent every year”.
The trees are very common in India and are easily grown in dry tracts in high altitude areas.
Researchers in this bio diesel have found that Jatropha seeds contain about 46-58 percent of oil, 30-35 percent of which can be extracted in a dry expeller.
Jatropha plant has also been found to reduce the CO2 content in the atmosphere and the new bio diesel would be environment friendly and help bring down pollution levels.
Scientists say that mass production is also feasible as Jatropha is an easy growing plant and can be mass bred even in a wasteland.
A substantial amount of the GDP is earmarked for the import of crude oil and petroleum based products.
Diesel accounts for about 40 percent of the refined products sold in India .
India imports 70 percent of its crude oil requirement for its 17 refineries that can process 2.3 million barrels per day.(ANI)
Src: http://news.newkerala.com
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