Nigerians should start growing Jathropha plants for personal use and commercial purposes. Other African countries have Commercial Jathropha farms that they use to earn foreign reserves. Despite the past failures in Nigeria, we should still try to cultivate it.

Ivory Coast is growing oil-rich jatropha plants and plans to make biofuels at home. Some cocoa and coffee farmers are growing jatropha on previously unused land, selling the seeds to Indian and Chinese buyers.


This is from an article from SunNews



Farming in Nigeria has become a serious business, but there are some cash crops that are still being neglected, though they can generate huge foreign exchange for both government and farmers.

One of such cash crops is Jatropha, which farmers call gold plant because of its value-chain which has potential to generating about N1.5 trillion from both local and international market and solves the problem of poverty in Nigeria.

Jatropha may sound new to some people but the crop has been around for years although its huge potential is yet to be discovered and have remained untapped in the country. One beautiful thing about the plant is that it could reduce importation of kerosene and diesel which could save foreign exchange and payment of petroleum subsidy, as the Jatropha diesel is now a healthy source of aviation fuel in the world. The plant can survive for eight months without water and has a life lifespan of 50 years
Daily Sun learnt that farmers who are committed to the cultivation of Jatropha plant are abandoning their farms for other crops because they are not getting support after investing heavily in the plantation, following government abandonment of initiative so far there has been no support or incentives to those farmers. Farmers said the movement for the production of biofuel as an alternative source of power was initiated during the Goodluck Jonathan administration but was abandoned along the line.

However, the gold plant has potential to create wealth through the establishment of small scale industries. For instance, from the seed alone one can get biodiesel, bio-kerosene, bio-petrol, glycerol and even organic fertiliser from the cake. The cake could also be used to generate electricity, animal feeds, and poultry feeds. It can be used to produce insecticide and also produce candle from the latex.

Farmers who want to venture into farming of Jatropha have no reason to fear because the plant can survive anywhere and does not require any particular soil type for growth. In Nigeria, farmers intercrop Jatropha with other plants like maize and cassava in between the Jatropha trees, so farmers do not have to look for another land to plant.

The market for bio-diesel and organic fertiliser is growing but there are not enough raw materials to feed the growth, which creates emerging market for Nigeria, as there are currently commercial plantations of Jatropha plants in Ghana, Mali, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Africa. Jatropha plant is widely found in Nigeria and the local names are botuje pupa, lapalapa pupa, okpokporu, sherigun, among others.

Jatropha plant has been identified as a very important source of bio-fuels after palm oil. It had been used as bio-diesel and organic fertiliser in several European, Asian and African countries.