Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘The Smart Revolution. Ethanol Corn Or Sugarcane?
‘Sweet Sorghum Is Smart’ – William Dar, ICRISAT’

Sorghum makes a revolutionary theory: Smart! For biofuel, a paradigm shift from American corn to American sorghum, from Brazilian sugarcane to Brazilian sorghum, that’s smart. To make ethanol, corn is fine, sugarcane is sweet, but sweet sorghum is sweet smart.

‘Sweet sorghum is the smart crop,’ Director General William Dar of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) says over lunch on broiled chicken, sinigang na maya-maya (sour soup, fish), tea and sugarcane juice somewhere in Quezon City, Philippines yesterday, January 11. ‘A smart crop’ – I wish I had thought of that.

And now Dar tells us, ‘Sweet sorghum is the smart crop. What we need to start the Smart Revolution is a smart crop.’ Now I’m thinking: If we’re as smart as we think we are.

Born January 11, The Smart Revolution advocates the enshrinement of pro-poor policies, among others. Sweet sorghum as source of ethanol is intelligent, not only because it is pro-poor. The Director General of ICRISAT enumerates 4 standards as his basis in saying sweet sorghum is a smart crop: food security, energy security, ecological sustainability, and water security. I write them down. He doesn’t explain; I have no questions. Let’s see if I’m as smart as I think I am:

Corn and sugarcane are food crops. The Yankees turn X amount of corn and the Brazilians Y amount of sugarcane into ethanol and they are denying X/Y quantities to the food manufacturers, who will (gladly) raise prices, and thereby punishing their customers by having to pay the price for a public policy that their peoples did not declare. They should be ashamed of themselves!

Sweet sorghum grain is food, but the yield in grains to a hectare is only about 4% of the yield in stalks, 4 tons to 92 tons/ha (Belum Reddy et al, ‘Sweet sorghum: A water-saving bio-energy crop,’ icrisat.org). To favor food and simplify, let me grant that the food yield of sweet sorghum is 10% and the stalk yield is 90% of the total harvest. Still, the ripple effect of the 10% is minimal, if visible at all. That reminds me of how the gifted Thomas Alva Edison defines genius: 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I don’t like it; too much work to do. So, I’ll take the 90% of sweet sorghum as my inspiration. A smart aleck, reversing Edison, I have been inspired to define genius as 90% inspiration and 10% perspiration. That should inspire others to help wage The Smart Revolution. Head first – assuming Heart – Hands later.

For a country to enjoy energy security, it will have to be self-sufficient and produce its own energy. For my country, since the Philippines has hardly any oil field, it means at least the fuel for cars and trucks must be tapped from crops, and the smart source for ethanol is sweet sorghum. What about the popular sweet crop, sugarcane? Okay, sweet sorghum is the smarter choice. It’s also sweeter, sweetheart.

Is it ecologically sustainable? Yes. Sweet sorghum can siphon off as much of the carbon dioxide in the air as sweet corn. The Ilocanos are a hardy people; they thrive anywhere. Like the Ilocanos of Northern Luzon in my country, sweet sorghum is resilient; so, it can reclaim and enrich marginal lands like corn or sugarcane cannot. Sweet sorghum is an intelligent solution to a problem soil. A crop for the sagacious farmer, not to mention the sagacious entrepreneur.

The cost of growing sweet sorghum is 4 times lower than that of sugarcane, P 17,820 compared to P 44,250/ha/year. Here, less is more, and that’s smart.

Crops need to drink water too. A favored crop in the Philippines, sugarcane doesn’t drink water – it gorges on it. For 1 crop of 12 months, sugarcane uses 36,000 cubic meters of water; for 2 crops of only 8-9 months, sweet sorghum sips only 8,000 cubic meters (Reddy et al, as cited). That’s 78% less water; in other words, sugarcane wolfs down 4.5 times more water than sweet sorghum. This is shocking news, at least to me, as my country has been cultivating sugarcane commercially since the 18th century under the Spanish regime; in the 19th century, sugarcane became a major export (Jose Maria T Zabala, fao.org). A historical lack of intelligence. So, we Filipinos have been cultivating for 200 years a crop that is a wastrel of water. This is water under the bridge we can stop if we’re smart enough.

Is the US smart enough to make a paradigm shift and make a sharp turn from corn to sweet sorghum? I doubt it. How about Brazil from sugarcane? As smart the United States, I guess.

Sweet sorghum is adaptable to many different sites. Flexible is smart.

While we are having lunch yesterday, I notice that the restaurant has ‘sugarcane juice’ and so we order a glass. It’s good. Dar comes up with an insight: That’s a good idea. Sweet sorghum juice is a good product. That’s what I call a smart customer.

Because it is soil-friendly, because it needs much less fertilizer, because of its multiple uses; and because a farmer can earn between $1,250 and $1,625 (at P40 to $1) (mixph.com), not peanuts in my country, now I can tell you: Sweet sorghum is a smart man’s choice of a poor man’s crop.

This is a multi-feedstock distillery, able to extract juice from not only sorghum but also sugarcane and corn. AR Palaniswamy, Managing Director of Rusni Distilleries says, ‘This ensures that we run the plant and provide employment to farmers throughout the year.’ A wise entrepreneur cultivates farmers.

GMA has since been supportive of sweet sorghum for ethanol production (see my ‘The Yankee Dawdle,’ americanchronicle.com). Smart President of her country.

The centerpiece of the conference is the setting up of what is to be called the National Sweet Sorghum Research and Development Center. R&D: I’m not happy to note that the name does not exactly fit the framework; there’s an important letter missing. The image I show (above) is to remind people to please not forget the art & science of Extension; E should always follow R&D. Not only that. Consider that E today must include KM (knowledge management) – you have to sell theory so that practice will follow. Science is swell if you can sell well.

Related to Extension, there’s another E that I think should be integrated into any framework for a national sweet sorghum institute: Entrepreneurship. In cultivating sweet sorghum, entrepreneurship should also be cultivated among Filipinos, in either of two ways: (1) Encouraging the big businessmen to put up their ethanol distillery plants and encouraging the surrounding farms to supply the sweet sorghum stalks on a continuing basis. (2) Encouraging small farmers out of reach of a distillery to collaborate and build village-scale sweet sorghum-based industries such as for syrup, jaggery, wine, feed, food, fuel, fertilizer. Small is smart.

Strategic issues to be addressed in the conference involve, in my own words: (a) production, (b) processing, (c) people, (d) public-private partnerships. I note that the title of the conference has the phrase review and planning. Good thinking. I also think that based on the range of issues listed to be discussed, the review is designed to be holistic, starting with the seeds and ending with what happens to the harvest, what are the benefits and who gets what. If you’re broad-minded, you don’t ever forget the distribution of benefits.

All in all, I am convinced sweet sorghum is The Smart Crop, the great climate change crop. So, I say the smart set are the Filipinos and other Asians, the Europeans, Africans, North and South Americans and others who are paying attention to climate change following the Kyoto Protocol (see also my ‘Atlas Blogged! Climate Change In UK, Then In UP, Then In US?’ americanchronicle.com). To those who have been intelligently accepting the Kyoto Protocol, I say:

Sweet sorghum is smart money.

Sorghum makes a radical tease: Smart. Now, for the rest of us, which one are you: Smart cookie, smart mouth, or smart ass? Those who have been foolishly rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, the peoples of the United States and Australia, to them I ask:

While you’re so rich, why aren’t you so smart?