Myanmar biofuel drive deepens food shortage

BANGKOK (AFP) – Myanmar is struggling to feed its people in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis — in part because the regime has been forcing some farmers to stop growing rice in a plan to produce biofuel instead.

In 2005 the military government’s leader Than Shwe ordered a national drive to plant jatropha, a poisonous nut he hoped would be the cornerstone of a state industry that would capitalise on growing world demand for biofuels.


A flowering bush which produces a nut that is poisonous to humans and animals but high in oil, jatropha is usually planted in arid regions where little else can survive.

Taking a page from the textbook of planned centralised economies, he issued a quota for jatropha production for every township in the country — even in cities, where people were forced to grow it in their yards and along roads.

“It was the national duty,” said Sai Khur Hseng, a Myanmar exile who has extensively studied the government’s biofuel programme. “Everybody had to plant it.”

A flowering bush which produces a nut that is poisonous to humans and animals but high in oil, jatropha is usually planted in arid regions where little else can survive.

But in fertile regions such as the southern Irrawaddy delta, where the cyclone hit, Than Shwe’s edict meant that fields producing rice and other foods were torn up, said Monique Skidmore of the Australian National University said.

“This has meant that people have either had to not plant paddy or pull up paddy” to grow the crop, she said.

In some cases, the military actually confiscated land from farmers to grow the nuts, said Dave Mathieson, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.

AFP