South African maize farmers push to be biofuel feedstock suppliers

South African maize farmers are pushing hard to change a government decision to exclude their crops as feedstock for bioethanol, in view of food security concerns.

Shortly after the government unveiled its biofuel strategy last December, Minister for Agriculture Lulu Xingwana opened a small window of hope for the maize and maize sorghum lobby by promising to change the Cabinet decision if they could prove that surplus stocks could be produced.

Maize is a staple in southern Africa. But with prices plunging, South African commercial farmers have left an estimated 1 million hectares of available land idle. Production has remained around 8.6 million tonnes annually – a figure that meets the demand of consumers while still ensuring a profit for farmers.

In an uncertain market, the balance can easily be disturbed, leading to huge losses, farm experts say. "Maize farmers are business people. And like any other business people, they want to see a good return. Few are willing to pour in extra cash to produce crops without an assurance they will be rewarded for their efforts," says Wessel Lemmer, a senior economist at Grain South Africa.

For agriculture experts, the inclusion of maize as a feedstock would open up many more possibilities for small black farmers in the former ‘homelands’ to produce for the market. The homelands were 10 reserves demarcated exclusively for black people in apartheid South Africa.

The maize lobby insists that the biofuel market would benefit farmers, and also be advantageous for farm labour and the transport sector.

Axing maize from the strategy has put a question mark on the viability of the Ethanol Africa project -- a private sector initiative that has gobbled up around 5.5 million dollars from investors even though construction has not started on the plant in Bothaville in the Free State, the maize heartland of South Africa.

While the maize lobby is awaiting further developments, the state-owned Central Energy Fund (CEF) is investigating the possibility of setting up five biofuel plants in the country -- for processing of sugar beet and sugar cane into bio-ethanol, and soy beans, sunflowers and canola into bio-diesel.

The government has downscaled the targets for biofuels: from an initial 4.3 percent of the total fuel production in the country to only 2 percent. Experts say that this translates into a mere 400 million litres of biofuel. South Africa burns up 20 billion litres of fossil fuel annually.

IPS