A farmer in Mozambique grows peas, beans and cassava in rotation—enough to feed the family with a little to spare. The farmer then sells that excess to CleanStar Mozambique, which dries and packages the produce for sale in the capital, Maputo. But the company also takes the surplus cassava, a starch-filled root and local food staple, and sends it to an ethanol fermentation plant built by ICM, a U.S. ethanol company, that employs enzymes produced by Denmark-based Novozymes. The ethanol produced is then sold in reusable plastic bottles to people in Maputo who own one of the 3,000 or so ethanol-burning clean cookstoves sold by CleanStar. When the fuel runs out, more can be purchased at an incipient network of CleanStar shops.

"We want to show that there is this idea of a bio-based society," says chemical engineer Thomas Nagy, executive vice president for stakeholder relations at Novozymes, which helped start and fund the scheme. "This is not a philanthropic project."

Novozymes and its corporate partners hope to create a bio-based, sustainable economy in Mozambique. Such an economy could point the way to reducing the two million annual deaths worldwide that result from breathing in smoky indoor air caused by burning charcoal. Currently, charcoal is the fuel of choice in much of the world and a nearly $10-billion market across sub-Saharan Africa. That is the market this ethanol-burning cookstove—and bio-based economy—aims to disrupt.

"Ethanol burns very clean," Nagy notes. The CleanStar venture opened its first ethanol production plant on May 17 in Dondo, capable of brewing two million liters of fuel per year. "Charcoal might be cheaper but it has less energy content per kilo[gram]."

The problem in this case is: replacing cheap charcoal, which farmers make by cutting down and burning trees, requires dependence on a much more complex, new and unproved system. "People use charcoal because it is cheap and easy," notes a prominent development expert who declined to be identified because of relationships with various clean cookstove donors and providers. "Ethanol is neither."

Food and fuel
The first step in this new process will be convincing farmers to halt charcoal production and slash-and-burn agriculture in favor of a new rotation system. Mozambican farmers currently grow corn and cassava, among other crops. But under the new system, they would grow nitrogen-fixing beans and peas along with staple or cash crops such as cassava, ground nuts, sorghum and soybeans in rotation in fields ringed by trees newly-planted to prevent erosion. "We have enrolled between 500 and 600 farmers today," Nagy says, and the project aims for at least 3,000 by next year. The CleanStar venture also provides each farmer with fertilizer and pesticides as well as technical assistance.

As a result of the new rotation system and improved soil fertility, farm family nutrition improves (44 percent of Mozambican children are stunted due to malnutrition and disease) and income can more than quadruple, according to Nagy. Selling the excess to city dwellers will improve their nutrition as well—and cut down on food imports. The excess cassava, also known as tapioca when dried to a powder, will be turned into a fuel to vie with charcoal and, in a bid to ensure that the staple crop does not end up being diverted from hungry stomachs to stoves, CleanStar will pay less than the crop's price as food.

9 Comments

1. 1. lamorpa 08:39 AM 5/31/12

   What happens when people 'poach' a farmer's trees? It will be, sadly, inevitable.

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2. 2. geojellyroll 08:43 AM 5/31/12

   "44 percent of Mozambican children are stunted due to malnutrition and disease".
   
   Forget the sideshow fluff in this article.. Children per mother 6.2 In Canada it's 1.3
   
   Spend the money on free condom and birth control pill dispensing machines on every corner of every village!!!

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3. 3. jimmy boy 10:11 PM 5/31/12

   I wonder if this will go like when a wing of the UN in I think was in the 70's or early 80’s gave solar ovens to some poor villages in India. The UN people came back check on their use and could not find very many of them. The UN people asked what happened to them, the villagers said they are evil and they had buried them. It seems the food didn't taste right. They were cooking their food over dried cow patties and the food just didn’t taste correct when cooked with the solar ovens. Think about that at your next meal.

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4. 4. Shoshin 03:53 AM 6/1/12

   So... lets see.. starving kids. Family fuel costs rise. Family sells crops to eco-corp for less than market value.
   
   Works for me.

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5. 5. singing flea in reply to jimmy boy 04:08 AM 6/1/12

   Interesting concept to present here. I remember as a kid cooking hotdogs with two nails in a board connected to a 110v wire. The idea was fun, but the hotdogs never did taste very good. There is something about cooking on wood, charcoal, peat or even cow dung that ethanol just can't replicate. Even the native bacteria in the air and water has a lot to do with flavor and smells. When ever I travel to Thailand for example the Thai food always tastes different then the same food cooked the same way in America.
   
   I guess you get used to what you grew up with when it comes to a home cooked taste.

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6. 6. singing flea 04:22 AM 6/1/12

   "Such an economy could point the way to reducing the two million annual deaths worldwide that result from breathing in smoky indoor air caused by burning charcoal."
   
   I seriously doubt this has anything to do with the project. I would think it has a lot more to do with making a profit for Novozymes and CleanStar.
   
   It seems to me that growing and cutting down cassava trees is no different then other trees used for making charcoal.
   
   It reminds me of Monsanto who want to get rid of the farmers seed crops because their seed has to be purchased from Monsanto for every crop.

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7. 7. chengbin19900731 01:08 PM 6/1/12

   To me, I truly think whether such method to produce ethanol is effective or not. According to this essay, perhaps this method is not positive. Therefore this method is required to improve to be useful to this condition.

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8. 8. jimmy boy in reply to singing flea 01:39 PM 6/2/12

   you don't eat cat in the US. Just joking.

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9. 9. johanmelchior 04:21 PM 6/6/12

   I work with Novozymes and let me begin by saying that this is a great article that touches upon the many different of this venture. However, the “anonymous development expert” needs to update his knowledge of African charcoal markets.
   
   Charcoal is no longer "cheap". Many "development experts" and other aid industry folks base their assumptions on outdated data, particularly when it comes to the charcoal markets. In the large cities across Africa, families are now paying on average $1 per day for charcoal cooking fuel, consuming 10% to 30% of their disposable income. Charcoal prices have doubled in the last three years in Maputo, and this experience is mirrored across the continent.
   
   Comparatively, the CleanStar ethanol is not expensive. We are pricing the cooking fuel at parity with charcoal on a monthly spend basis. 5 years ago, this solution would not be economically viable as charcoal prices were much lower, but with today’s charcoal prices, it is. And charcoal prices will likely continue to rise. Simply because forests disappear at an alarming rate.
   
   Another comment worth making is that this venture will actually lead to more jobs in Mozambique. There are far more jobs involved in the ethanol-for-cooking value chain than the deforestation-based-charcoal-for-cooking value chain. More income is flowing into the hands of our smallholder farming partners, our employees, logistics contractors and distribution partners.

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