13 January 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's Agriculture Minister, Soares Nhaca, has pledged that the government will not allow the production of biofuels to compromise the country's food security.
Interviewed in the latest issue of the weekly paper "O Pais", Nhaca declared "no land where the agro-ecological conditions are fit for food production will be used for biofuel".
"This is a government decision", he said, "and work is under way across the country to identify land that can be used to produce biofuel, but always in the perspective of finding marginal land which does not conflict with food production".
The government has already been encouraging peasant farmers to grow the shrub jatropha, from whose seeds biofuel can be produced, on marginal land. Nhaca said there was now an investor interested in processing jatropha, and he predicted that Mozambique will have its first biofuel from jatropha within the next six months.
The government has approved one gigantic biofuel project, known as PROCANA, which will produce ethanol from sugar cane grown on 30,000 hectares of land in the southern district of Massingir.
The main shareholder in PROCANA is the London-based Central African Mining and Exploration Company (CAMEC), better known for its copper and cobalt mining operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Asked about accusations that CAMEC was involved in money laundering in Congo, Nhaca declined to comment.
"What I can guarantee is that the company has respected all the Mozambican legislation governing foreign investment":, he said.
There has been an avalanche of applications for biofuel projects in recent months. If all were granted, they would gobble up about ten million hectares of land. But Nhaca pointed out that, apart from PROCANA, none of them had yet received the go-ahead from the government.
Asked about the government's frequent promises to carry out a "green revolution", Nhaca said this revolution is under way. One example was that seed producers in the central province of Manica had, in the space of a year, doubled their areas of production.
"Last campaign they asked for credit, but this campaign they don't need to, because the sale of their seeds allows some investment in their activities", he said. The country no longer needed to import seed, he added, because Mozambican producers were now able to supply the entire market.
Asked whether the ten national directors and deputy directors whom his predecessor Erasmo Muhate had sacked would be invited back to their old jobs, Nhaca hinted that they would be.
"All Ministry of Agriculture cadres are useful", he declared. "That's the first thing I told the Ministry workers, that I'm relying on them, and that they are all useful. I'm willing to involve everybody in the activities that the ministry must undertake".
"Everybody is called upon to take part in the great battles facing the Ministry", he stressed. "The challenges are enormous. All are necessary, without any exception".
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