http://www.mfrfp.org

A poor person’s greatest need is a way to

make money…

…this is a proposal how Africa’s rural poor

might go about making money.

"The turtle does not make any progress until he sticks his neck out"

http://www.mfrfp.org

Rural Fuel Production

The rural fuel refining technology is central to the trend of

decentralized energy production and potentially the key piece of the

puzzle that can unlock the potential of rural African farmers.

The rural fuel reactor is a low cost technology that converts

vegetable oils into a direct replica of petroleum derived

diesel fuel.

Unlike biodiesel, this is a hydrocarbon and is a direct, drop in

replacement for today’s petroleum derived fuels. The fuel

produced matches the same D975 specifications for diesel

and can be pipelined or used exactly like existing diesel fuel.

The technology is unique in that it requires no external

inputs like hydrogen or methanol and can be done on a

distributed scale. This innovation decouples refining from

traditional, massive, fixed-based infrastructure and allows

finished product to be produced at the source of feedstock.

The reactor is small scale, producing 50,000 gallons per year

and is totally self-powered from its own refining byproducts.

The reactors are designed to be extremely easy to operate and manufacture. Each reactor is capable of

producing 50,000 gallon per year of renewable diesel and is low cost to produce.

$45 per barrel crude vegetable oil translates to $1 per gallon feedstock cost and a $90 per barrel crude

petroleum translates to fuel sales prices of $2.30 per gallon, which enables a refining profit in excess of

$1 per gallon after operating costs. Finding the missing piece in the poverty elimination puzzle the world

is trying solve find might come down to the opportunity that crude petroleum oil priced at $90 per

barrel in 2011 offers for the production of rural fuel.

Jatropha Vegetable Oil

Jatropha is a plant that produces seeds containing vegetable oils that can

be used to produce fuel using the rural fuel reactor. Each seed produces

30 to 40% of its mass in oil and the plant can be grown in a range of

difficult soil conditions, including arid and otherwise marginal conditions.

Jatropha is a perennial vegetable oil seed plant so only needs to be

planted once, then year after year it produces its’ oil seeds without the

need for re-planting.

If Jatropha vegetable oil can be produced for a cost as low as $45 per

barrel, then producing rural fuel can be an economic catalyst that can

transform the standard of living of rural Africans and help move the world

to a sustainable food and fuel system.

http://www.mfrfp.org

The Challenges in achieving a $45 per Barrel Crude Vegetable Oil Price from Jatropha

The challenge encountered in Jatropha cultivation for biofuels so far is that it has been plagued with a

number of problems, such as:

1. It is very difficult to finance a Jatropha plantation business plan as Jatropha hedges take a number

of years to build up to full yield.

2. The yields per acre needed to cover the costs of a plantation operation seem elusive.

3. Jatropha's fertilizer, water and good soil requirements to produce a yield high enough to support a

plantation operation are not a sustainable way to farm and could possibly displace food crops.

4. Jatropha has proven to be difficult to grow in mono-culture plantations due to disease.

Jatropha for Biofuel, Animal Feed and Fencing

Jatropha is an excellent “living” fence

and this perennial crop makes it an

ideal complement to an intensive,

rotational grazing system.

Using the two concepts of the

Jatropha hedge providing an

economic service as part of a

rotational grazing system and the

Jatropha meal cake as part of a

poultry feed ration, the economics of

producing a Jatropha oil based fuel

can be transformed.

Factors in Jatropha’s favor under a rotational grazing system:

1. Jatropha has proven to grow well and be extremely hardy when it is cultivated as a living fence.

2. A rotational, grass based meat production operation requires fences.

3. Jatropha has proven to grow on marginal lands, although with substantially reduced yields.

4. There are many small communities in Africa that have plenty of land that can be cultivated with

living hedges without needing to purchase or lease the land.

5. A rotational, grass fed poultry operation starts to produce an income within 2 months, is labor

intensive and the little equipment needed, is low cost and at an ideal technology level for Africa.

6. Running a grass fed beef and poultry operation improves soil quality rather than depletes it like a

mono-culture Jatropha plantation.

7. When the Food and Fuel activities are combined, they are complimentary as the increase in soil

quality should increase Jatropha yields from the hedges surrounding the grazing pastures and the

hedges help keep the top soil in the pastures from blowing away in wind.

8. Consumers are recognizing the benefits of grass feed meat and poultry, even paying a 100%

premium for these grass fed animals over existing corn fed animals.

9. Diesel fuel prices rise the further you get away from urban centers and the closer you get to areas

with large amounts of land suitable for farming Jatropha and populations existing at a $1 per day.

http://www.mfrfp.org

Alternative Jatropha Cultivation Model

If you don't have to worry that yields per acre are low and you are not displacing food producing

acreage, then Jatropha grown around grazing pasture can become an excellent, low cost feedstock oil.

The basic concept of using the

Jatropha plant as a “living” fence as

part of a rotational grazing system is

that Jatropha provides an economic

function for the farmer so the land

used does not have to be purchased

by the producer of the fuel.

Not incurring a capital cost for the

land greatly reduces the need to go

for high yields as the fuel sales

revenue is not being used to cover

the costs of purchasing or leasing land or having to economically compete for highly productive land

that could be used for crop cultivation.

To supplement a grass fed poultry diet, farmers can use the meal cake residual from the Jatropha seed

crush extraction process in the place of corn. The main value derived from the Jatropha plant for the

farmer is then the meal cake rather than fuel. The meal cake can be converted into protein through

animal husbandry which in turn enables these meat products to be sold worldwide. Instead of having to

grow corn, farmers gain an economic benefit for harvesting the Jatropha oil seeds

and this means that the fuel sales revenue is not financing the cost of harvesting.

Feed Chickens Jatropha Instead of Corn

Chickens need a source of protein as they are not fully able to survive on a grass

only diet and fly maggots can only supply some of this protein requirement.

Chickens in the US market are fed a ration of corn as their main grain source and

the opportunity exist is to use Jatropha meal cake left over from the oil seed crush

process that is used to produce the crude oil in place of this grain.

Some types of Jatropha are toxic, which makes a hedge of them very effective as a

living fence for alley farming, but this toxicity prevents its use as a source of feed for chickens. There are

a number of processing treatments that can render the Jatropha meal cake non-toxic or there are non-

toxic varieties which makes the meal suitable for animal feed. These techniques open up the

opportunity to use the Jatropha meal cake as the main ration compliment to grass and integrate chicken

razing with fuel production from Jatropha hedges used to fence off the rotational cattle pastures.

Whatever means of producing a perennial oil seed like Jatropha is utilized, it only has to be economically

competitive with the whole process of planting and harvesting an annual like corn. Jatropha being a

perennial, has a huge natural advantage over an annual like corn, so all things being equal should be

economically more competitive than corn as a poultry feed ingredient.

http://www.mfrfp.org

A Distributed Cloud of Farmers Integrate in a Food and Fuel Production System

A "cloud" of farmers

around a centralized

processing facility is

the simplest way to

describe the concept

of the Food and Fuel

system with the

processing site acting

as a "Center of

Excellence".

All aspects of an

integrated food and

fuel production

system are

coordinated by a

community owned

processing facility.

Manual, Mechanically Assisted or Mechanical Harvesting

A separate, community owned harvesting enterprise could be set up

to own the oil seed harvesting operation and be paid by the seed

crushing operation for the seeds delivered by the “cloud” of

distributed farmers.

The harvesting enterprises would maintain the living hedges during

the growing season and collect the oils seeds when they ready for

harvesting, delivering them to the central oil seed crush facility.

Mechanized or mechanically assisted

harvesting might become essential to

collect enough oil seeds to enable this to

work at scale. There are a number of

mechanical harvesters available like the

BEI Jatropha Wave or the modified

tractor mounted Korvan berry picker

that are slowly being made available.

A distributed “cloud” of chicken farmers would buy the meal cake produced from their hedges back

from the central seed crush operation in place of the corn ration used in their chicken production. To

ensure fairness, these farmers might be limited to the amount of meal cake they could buy, determined

by the amount of hedges they have in place to ensure contribution to the local, integrated system.

http://www.mfrfp.org

Raising Broiler Chickens

Broiler chickens are raised for their meat rather than for

their eggs and most broilers can be taken from

hatchlings to full weight of 4 + lbs., ready for slaughter in

2 months. The chicks will be nurtured in the grower’s

maternity facility for 20 days and then turned out onto

grass, raised on grass using the portable tractor system.

Processing Chickens

The growers will bring their chickens to the central

processing plant on a regular schedule and process the

chickens themselves. A rotational processing schedule

can be organized where the growers under supervision

process their chicken and enables a return of as much of

the value added food production to the rural population

as possible. This rotational processing schedule also

prevents one group of people specializing in processing

and helps eliminate the demoralizing aspect of

processing on a continuous basis.

Refrigerating Chickens

The meat can be refrigerated or frozen after processing. Meat does not freeze until it gets below 28° F

because of its salt content, which suppresses the freezing point and poultry meat kept above 26° F can

still be marketed as fresh, frozen poultry will stay flavorful for about 6 months.

Shipping poultry from developing countries can be a challenge due to the need for cooling to refrigerate

chickens right after processing so that they can then be transported to export markets. The chickens

need to be cooled in an ice slush of 33 deg F to prevent microbial growth right after they have been

processed in 135 deg F scalding water to ease the feather removal process. The electricity required to

meet this chilled water and refrigeration requirement is substantial and not readily available in rural

communities. Fortunately the rural fuel reactor produces a great deal of waste heat which can be turned

in to refrigeration using the ammonia absorption cooling process.

Absorption cycles produce cooling with thermal input

and minimal electric input, by using heat and mass

exchangers, pumps and valves. An absorption cycle can

be viewed as a mechanical vapor-compression cycle,

with the compressor replaced by a generator, absorber

and liquid pump. The absorption cycle enjoys the

benefits of requiring a fraction of the electrical input and

enjoyed widespread use from the 1920’s as gas powered

refrigerators/ice-makers until electricity became low cost

and widely available.

http://www.mfrfp.org

Integrated Beef and Poultry

An integrated animal production system where each animal compliments

the other is essential for both animal health and economic productivity. For

example, chickens grown in mobile chicken coops or free ranged with

portable electric fences are an ideal complement to ruminant animals.

Flies deposit their larva

in the ruminant manure

and just before they hatch, they are a fantastically

rich source of protein, so chickens go crazy for these

maggots. Chickens spread the cow manure while

they scratch in the dung patties for the larva, spreading

the manure out on the landscape. The chickens are provided

an excellent source of protein and at the same time reduce the fly

load the cattle endure. Integrating chickens with cattle is as easy as

following the cattle rotation 3 days later with the mobile chicken coops so the chickens eat the fly larva

at maximum size, but catch them just before they can hatch and cause the cattle discomfort or disease.

In this way, the chickens provide pest control and manure spreading in a complimentary system. The

rotational grass feed system keeps building soils with the addition of chicken and ruminant manure. The

grasses grown in this animal / plant interaction are produced from soils that are fertilized by animals in a

totally natural cycle that has evolved over thousands of years. This process reverts human agriculture

practices to a more natural state where animals are interacting with plant matter and we, the humans,

are the predators that derive our sustenance from the animals sustained by the vegetable matter.

The Rotational Grazing System

One of the pioneers of the integrated rotational grazing system, Joel Salatin, started farming in the

1960's on abandoned land that was almost bare rock. The farm had been abandoned by grain farmers as

they could no longer get anything to grow due to the totally depleted soil. Joel Salatin now can produce

3 times more grass per acre than his neighbor due to the utilization of the rotational system on his farm

that has re-build the depleted soil over the last 40 years he has been using the system.

Growing Grass not Biofuel

Grass is the best solar to carbon converter on earth, so growing it in a tropical place like central Africa is

a good idea as it can be used to build the soil back up that has been destroyed by the usual slash and

burn agriculture practices employed.

Growing grass builds rich and deep soil, with the biofuel becoming just the byproduct of the living fences

surrounding these great soils. The integrated rotational grazing concept grows great grass and builds

good soils as opposed to destroying soils with dedicated mono-culture crops for biofuel fuel production.

The torrential downpours in the tropics like Africa don't wash away the nitrogen, but it gets stored in the

carbon material that has died off during the grass grazing. This process stores and makes the nitrogen

ready to be absorbed at the right rate for higher than normal re-growth rate of the grazed pasture grass.

http://www.mfrfp.org

Grass and the S-Curve of Growth

Above ground and below ground grass structures mirror each

other in a 2:1 ratio, as shown in the picture on the right. Every

time you graze the grass above ground, the roots die off below

ground to keep this ratio constant. The root die off after

grazing puts new carbon material into the ground and right

after grazing, the grass puts all its energy into growing back up.

If you co-ordinate the grazing of animals with the S-curve of

grass growth, then you get tremendous grass growth

productivity, plus a tremendous build-up of carbon in the soil.

Humus develops well

from the carbon deposited in the soil resulting from the grass

root system die-off every time the grass gets grazed in the

rotational system. This results in the soil becoming deeper,

richer and able to handle water much better, the longer a

pasture is in the rotational system.

Grass increases its’ maximum brix content and

slows down growth, ready to produce flowering

seeds just before it gets to maximum height.

That is the time to put the animals back onto

graze it in another rotation of the pastures, as

shown in the cartoon on the right. This high brix

is great for the ruminant animals as the grass is

at its maximum energy condition just before the

grass diverts energy to seed production and the

ruminants graze the grass to the right height for

the chickens that follow them. This system has

evolved over thousands of years where the grass

is grazed and animal manure added back at the

same time. The beauty of this cycle is that as the

grass starts to grow its fastest, the grass can

absorb the most amount of nitrogen. The grass

hits its’ growth spurt right after grazing and

when there is the most amount of nitrogen

available in the animal dung left by the grazing

ruminants. This allows the manure, spread by

the following chickens, to be absorbed with no

nitrogen run off and the natural fertilizer utilized

to the maximum by the grass for growth.

http://www.mfrfp.org

Rotational Grass Based Beef Production

Traditionally, all beef was grass-fed beef, but in the United States today what is commercially available

today is almost all feedlot beef. Before World War 2, most steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter,

today they are 14 or 16 months due to the corn fed system. Being much faster, it is more profitable to

produce meat in this manner.

The advantage of grass fed beef is that meat from a grass-fed steer has

about one-half to one-third as much fat as a comparable cut from a grain-

fed animal. Lower in calories, grass-fed beef is also higher in vitamin E

and omega-3 fatty acids, which are thought to help reduce the risk of

cancer, lower the likelihood of high blood pressure, and make people less

susceptible to depression. Further, meat from grass-fed cattle is rich in

another beneficial fat called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which

supposedly lowers the risk of cancer.

The other advantage of raising grass fed beef comes from the fact that there is no need for

mechanization, specialist antibiotics or access to specialized grain based feed diets like those used in

CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).

The health benefits are certainly an advantage for grass-fed beef however the economic challenge is

that you cannot take a beef calf from a birth weight of 80 pounds to 1,200 pounds in a little more than a

year on grass. Some of the other challenges for grass feed beef are that it requires a lot of skill from the

farmer, is subject to the seasons and the meat currently is more expensive. Having said this, the

problem with the existing meat production system is that it takes enormous quantities of corn, protein

supplements, antibiotics and other drugs, including growth hormones.

Using an intensive, rotational grass based production system produces a beef product that need not be

more expensive even though it involves growing meat at a rate that is 70% as efficient as a CAFO

operation using grain. These efficiency losses in beef production can be made up by integrating other

meat production activities and in this way, easily make up for the 30% in lost income with the other

meat products produced on the same land. By combining activities in just the right combination, each

activity compliments the others. A 70% efficiency rating for each product like beef, poultry and pigs adds

up to an overall to 300% efficiency gain over mono crop farming.

Integrated Food Production Capacity of 100 Acres

Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm (Multiple Faces)

produces the following amount of food in one

season:- This output represents an extraordinary

amount of food from only 100 acres of productive

land and 400 acres of woodland.

Combining a series of different production activities, staying away from mono culture and concentrated

production, eliminates the need for mechanization, plus eliminates the need for external inputs like

fertilizer, as all “wastes” are used to help build soil fertility.

360,000 eggs (30,000 dozen)

12,000 Broiler Chickens

800 Stewing Hens

50 Beeves (representing 25,000 pounds of beef)

250 Hogs (50,000 pounds of pork)

800 Turkeys

500 Rabbits

http://www.mfrfp.org

Integrated Food Production from 1,000 Acres

The Polyface rotational system integrated with a Jatropha based living fence network could represent a

tremendous income generating opportunity for African farmers and their communities. Operating 1,000

acres per village of rotational pasture based meat production could render these kinds of economics:

The grass based system requires very little mechanization and a very low capital requirement, but is

labor intensive making it ideal for employment creating opportunities in rural Africa. This an agricultural

system that is very well suited to Africa, where lack of capital is offset by an excellent knowledge of the

land, many people steeped in the ways of working the land and a desire to work hard at a physical job.

Chickens can be the first step

Raising chickens is the easiest way for an African rural farmer to get into the business of producing meat

products on a village scale as it is a very manageable first step.

A fantastic book has been written called Pastured Poultry Profit$ - by Joel Salatin

and details exactly how to go about producing organic chickens without the need

for expensive machinery. A couple working six months per year for 50 hours per

week on 20 acres can net $25,000-$30,000 per year with an investment equivalent

to the price of one new medium-sized tractor in the USA.

A few simple chicken processing pieces of equipment are needed to process chickens, these include a

scalder and a plucker. All this equipment can be built for very little cost and at a technology level that is

suitable for African village scale enterprises.

Scalding the chickens to remove the feathers requires hot water and the MFRFP

Platform generates plenty of heat which can be used for heating the water for

the chicken scalders.

Pluckers are needed to remove the

feathers with a high reliability and in a

high quality way. These simple

machines can be powered with a small

motor, with power easily supplied by

the MFRFP Platform.

Simple chicken processing equipment that is suitable for rural Africa is available at low cost and this

equipment might even be suitable for manufacture in Africa. Let’s take that first step now!

Produce Sales Value in US $ dollars Total Revenue in US $

3,600,000 eggs (300,000 dozen) $1.00 per dozen $300,000

120,000 Broiler Chickens $2.00 per chicken $240,000

8,000 Stewing Hens $2.00 per chicken $ 16,000

500 Beeves (representing 250,000 pounds of beef) $1.00 per lbs $250,000

2,500 Hogs (500,000 pounds of pork) $1.00 per lbs $250,000

8,000 Turkeys $6.00 per turkey $ 48,000

5,000 Rabbits $3.00 per rabbit $ 15,000

$1,119,000