Green Options » cassava

Tradition, Biofuel and Famine in Uganda

Kay Sexton — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:17:25 +0000

Traditional farming is about to make a come-back across Uganda, according the country’s Agriculture Minister, Hope Mwesigye. Traditionally, Ugandan’s rich soil and fairly abundant rainfall allowed farmers to grow a range of staple foods, from plantains, cassava and sweet potatoes through to grains like millet, sorghum and corn as well as beans, and groundnuts.

Since the 1980s, the major cash crop in Uganda has been coffee, closely followed by tobacco, and then tea and cotton, although the ‘70s and ‘80s saw collapses in the infrastructure which meant that cotton and tea in particular lost their markets and farmers started to sell their staple crops for cash in regional and local markets instead.

Diversification was the message of the 1990s and many non-traditional exports were attempted, supported by the World Bank and the Ugandan Development Bank. So why now does the government want to return to traditional farming practices?

Pro-Poor Biofuel Crops: Sweet Sorghum and Cassava

Nick Chambers — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:41:24 +0000

Editor’s Note: I was in Houston, TX, last week, celebrating the International Year of the Planet at the first ever joint meeting between the American societies of Soil Science, Geology, Crop Science and Agronomy. With a significant focus on biofuels, this conference was rife with interesting materials.

The Challenge: Find biofuel crops that are “pro-poor.”

One Answer: Crops that can be grown with limited resources by small-scale farmers, can be converted to biofuel with existing cheap technology, and can simultaneously provide food, fuel, and livestock feed.

In my last post I discussed how agriculture could regain its rightful place as the keystone of civilization due to the rise of biofuels over the next 30 years or so. But, in what seems a ridiculously colossal conundrum, hundreds of millions of impoverished people worldwide could face starvation due to competition of fuel land with food land.

Sweet Potato and Cassava More Efficient Than Corn In Ethanol Study

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:26:20 +0000

According to the US Department of Agriculture, recent experiments show that sweet potatoes and tropical cassava yield two to three times as much carbohydrate for ethanol production as field corn. Sweet potatoes and cassava also require significantly less fertilizer and pesticide than corn.

The experiments are unique in that all three crops were grown at the same time in two different areas of the country.

But sweet potatoes and cassava are not without disadvantages.