Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘To Harvest The Sun. To Sow The Wind And Reap The Whirlwind’
October 1988: Professor Hartmut Michel wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. January 2008: The feisty and prestigious Professor Michel continues to wage a campaign against biofuels, comes to the Philippines and wins over, among others, the feisty & prestigious Philippine Daily Inquirer – he doesn’t win me to his side. Awe-inspiring Nobel Prize winners are not always right, and neither is the awe-inspiring Inquirer.

From my analysis of the Professor’s statements above and from other sources, I can see that the Professor is making sense – and nonsense. Michel is right and wrong. I believe biofuel is not a tragedy and what Michel says is a comedy of error. You can see that for yourself right now if you can think outside the box.

The German Professor is Director of the Department of Molecular Membrane Biology of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany. Planck, German of course, the father of quantum theory, was of the opinion that atheism was an obsession with symbols (Wikipedia). (Right! Thinking inside the box is an obsession with symbols.)

While scientists were leaving Germany during the Hitler years, Planck ‘felt it his duty to remain in his country’ although he was opposed to some of the Government’s policies, particularly as regards the persecution of the Jews’ (nobelprize.org). In all my 68 years, I have never planned to leave my country and, yes, while I have been opposed to some Government policies, I have been opposed to those opposed to the Government, in her time that of Cory Aquino, in his time that of Fidel Ramos, this time that of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. They don’t know any better.

Today I’m opposed to those who are opposed to biofuels if they don’t know any better.

Is Professor Michel thinking outside the box? In the Inquirer story (2008 January 14, inquirer.net), TJ Burgonio reports that Michel was in Manila last week and spoke in the Nobel Forum January 9, Wednesday at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC). ‘We should not put money in biofuel development. It’s counterproductive,’ the Professor told his audience. I wasn’t listening – I wasn’t there.

That is not a valid assumption, Professor Michel. You cannot assume that when Indonesians and Malaysians and Filipinos grow their palm oil, first they clear their forests and, then burn everything on sight. The clearing of forests is not a characteristic inherent in the growing of biofuels; it is a choice people make. So, you can grow corn (the Yankees’ favorite), or sugarcane (the Brazilians’ favorite), or sweet sorghum (my favorite climate change crop) without cutting down a single tree in the forest. If you insist, you have a hidden agenda. Or monkey business.

Now, as Professor Teodoro Mendoza of the University of the Philippines Los Baños points out in his paper ‘Are Biofuels Really Beneficial For Humanity?’ (Philippine Journal of Crop Science, December 2007), ‘a huge amount of oil’ is consumed in the making, transport and storage of fertilizer. Let’s take the case of the nitrogen fertilizer, as nitrogen is ‘often the limiting factor in crop production.’ That’s about 2 liters of oil to 1 kilo of nitrogen. (Not only that. Mendoza points out that 1 kilo of nitrogen applied to the soil contributes to the pollution of the air by another 10 kilos equivalent of carbon dioxide.) That is to say, to produce and distribute and use fertilizer, all along the way you use fossil fuel – the one whose use you are trying to eliminate. I agree with the Professor: This is ridiculous!

But wrong assumption, Professor; wrong strategy too. You don’t have to fertilize your biofuel crop, or any crop for that matter. That’s exactly the reason I prefer sweet sorghum, because this crop grows well enough alone even without fertilizer. I have learned that this crop grows well most anywhere in fact, including waterlogged sites and marginal lands (try and check with icrisat.org) – so you don’t have to open forestlands for sweet sorghum plantations.

That’s not to mention that you don’t have to have thousands of hectares devoted solely to sweet sorghum. Farmers can plant a legume such as pigeon pea after sweet sorghum, to enrich the soil for the next crop. Farmers know relay cropping. Farmers can also mitigate the risks inherent in single-crop farming by growing several crops simultaneously to provide not only several sources of food and income but insurance against the failure of any crop arising from the attack of any pest or disease. Farmers know integrated pest management and multiple cropping.

When you grow crops for biofuel instead of food, this can cause food shortages (or food short circuits – my term). Professor Michel is correct. Surprise: Instead of growing the non-food biofuel crops, the Yankees insist on using corn as feedstock to manufacture ethanol, and the Brazilians insist on using sugarcane for their ethanol. Corn goes into the manufacture of thousands of consumer and industrial products; sugarcane goes into the manufacture of probably even more. Consider corn only, consider the multiplier effect of American cars eating American corn. What’s eating the Yankees?

Now, let’s think outside the box of corn.

Again, wrong assumption, Professor, and wrong strategy. I said, ‘When you grow crops for biofuel instead of food …’ why do you insist on using a food crop like corn or sugarcane to produce ethanol? In other words, you’re playing with fire when you use a food crop to produce biofuel for cars. You don’t need a food crop to produce alcohol, period; if you insist, you must be under the influence.

If you haven’t seen The Multiplier Effect, come visit the Philippines now (or, better yet, retire here): American corn becoming the US’ major source of ethanol has caused the increase in the prices of foods and related items not only in the United States but as far as in these Pearls of the Orient Seas, because we Filipinos eat American corn – we import our corn, joke or no joke, from the Yankees.

Would you believe? We import American corn for the birds and the bees – we feed our poultry with American corn, and of course the fastfood restaurant Jollibee – with its Bee mascot attending to each of the many branches worldwide – serves delicious chicken fed with delicious American corn.

It’s crazy. Roy Huckabay, Executive Vice President of the Linn Group, says, ‘When the energy markets went bananas over the last year, the value of corn as an energy source sky-rocketed.’ So, the consumers have to dig deeper into their pockets to pay the high prices of foods. This is stealing from the poor to give to the rich, Robin Hood in reverse. If you insist, you must be under the influence of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Professor Michel is correct, according to my favorite brilliant Senator, Miriam Defensor-Santiago (January 15, Donna Pazzibugan & TJ Burgonio, newsinfo.inquirer.net). She says:

Biofuel is land-based and will eventually compete with food. Because the Philippines has a small land area, biofuel production will tend to encroach on food production. Corporations are already searching for millions of hectares for jatropha alone. We have to step on the brakes and decelerate.

Wrong assumption, Senator, and wrong strategy. You are allowing biofuel to compete with food – why should you? Even considering the high food prices, that corn for fuel competes with corn for food and feed is not an argument against bioethanol crops; rather, it is an argument against madness in using a food crop as a source of biofuel. That corporations are searching for millions of hectares for non-food-crop jatropha alone, which is for biodiesel, is not an argument against biodiesel crops either. No Ma’am, I know we have a tiny country, but the Biofuels Act does not raise a serious debate on food versus biofuels. Rather, it raises a serious debate on strategy for biofuel production. Because of the assumed biofuel strategy, biofuel is tragedy.

In the same Inquirer report, Parañaque Representative Roilo Golez says:

There seems to be a mad rush to develop biofuels. A lot of resources are being committed, including millions of hectares of land and billions of pesos, on something that is now being debated.

There is a mad rush, Sir, I agree with you, all over the world, including in the United States, which has continuously refused to acknowledge the wisdom of the Kyoto Protocol adopted in 1997, can you imagine that? Millions of hectares are being committed, but not in the Philippines. No one can commit millions of hectares to any crop (except rice) in the Philippines – we have only a few millions to begin with. Unless you are referring not to cultivated lands but forestlands to be cleared or deforested sites to be cleared anyway. To be committed to assigning those millions to jatropha alone, or to any biofuel crop for that matter, would be to be insane. To be or not to be, that is the question.

And Sir, biofuels is not something that is being debated (unless of course you’re listening to Professor Michel) – rather, it is which plants (crops or non-crops) to use as biofuels. Such as the source for ethanol: The Yankees prefer corn; the Brazilians prefer sugarcane; the Filipinos prefer sugarcane – Team ICRISAT prefers sweet sorghum. I prefer Team ICRISAT’s choice if you ask me. I have written about 25 full-length essays on this subject, all published by American Chronicle (for a quick view, read ‘My American Book. Embracing Science Embracing Faith’). Sweet sorghum is ‘a smart man’s choice of a poor man’s crop’ (frankahilario.com) because it need not compete with food crops for site or size; it needs little fertilizer; it needs little water; it needs little pesticide. All things considered, sweet sorghum is cheaper and better than the other crops raised for ethanol. Sweet sorghum makes sense out of nonsense.

So you see, Professor Michel, it’s all in the assumptions; it’s all in the approach, it’s all in the strategy.

In other words, the Professor is thinking only of one approach to the growing of any crop: mechanized, chemical agriculture. The farm machines gobble up gasoline or diesel (fossil fuels). The fertilizers you apply and the insecticides you spray against insect pests and herbicides against weeds are manufactured using loads of fossil fuels. You pump out gallons of water using gallons of fossil fuels. Mendoza (cited) says you need to pump about 10,000 liters of water to make 1 liter of ethanol. You are using your enemy to fight your enemy – so, the Professor is right; all the world’s a stage, and it is the theater of the absurd!

But there is another approach that our Nobel laureate has failed to mention in the growing of any crop: Small is beautiful. Didn’t German-British economist Ernest Schumacher teach us exactly that 35 years ago? Schumacher won my head and heart instantly. In homage, I named one of my sons after him. I’ve lost that son of mine, but I still remember him with fondness; I’ve lost my copy of Schumacher’s book, but I remember him kindly warning us against big machines in the big farms. (I’m glad Time listed him one of a hundred heroes of the last century.)

So I say, in the spirit of Schumacher: Small farms, small machines, big heads, big muscles. Less and less is more and more. So: Less and less fertilizers. Less and less insecticides. Less and less herbicides. Less and less water. (Not to mention less and less middlemen.) Even big business in biofuels can be small farms taken together. Proof of concept? The Rusni distillery producing ethanol from sweet sorghum is probably the world’s first in relying for feedstock on Indian farmers in village clusters in Andhra Pradesh, India (icrisat.org). Thousands of small farmers are planting sweet sorghum hybrids from ICRISAT; sweet sorghum as a biofuel crop is the work of Team ICRISAT, whose Team Captain is William Dar (see also my ‘The Color Yellow. Run, Al Gore, Run! (Run, ICRISAT, Run!’ americanchronicle.com).

The image (above) is to remind you that biofuel is not just in the numbers. It’s in the approach. In one approach, money is the incentive; in the other approach, more than money is the incentive. Whose side are you?

While I disagree with the Professor in his fragmented approach to solving the problem, I agree with him in his conclusion that there is global warming and so we better do something about it. He tells his Manila audience that ‘the Philippines is vulnerable to a rise in sea level and stronger storms as an offshoot of global warming’ (Burgonio as cited). So, ‘the Philippines has every reason to do everything to reduce the use of fossil energy.’ Yes, the Filipino is worth thinking outside the box for.

The Professor suggests that the Philippines tap other renewable energy sources to generate power. ‘The islands are rich in wind power. You should invest in wind to generate electricity.’ I appreciate the suggestion. In this, I like to think Professor Hartmut Michel is saying, in effect, if you sow the wind, you will harvest the whirlwind. And that makes an excellent energy source!

Nobody ever said ‘Biofuels alone.’ So, why not machines to harvest the wind and solar cells and sweet sorghum to harvest the sun? In Africa, Asia, South America. Then those harvests of seasons will be harvests of reason.

In the meantime, Manila remains the most polluted city in the world, and I’m referring only to atmosphere. Consider: 1 million cars smoking carbon dioxide into the very air you breathe. Consider: Smoking is bad for your health.