Tropical belt has advantage

Tropical belt has advantage

I refer to your article Economy still not efficient (The
Jakarta Post, Sept. 21, 1995). Indonesia has a comparative
competitive advantage: It is nicely spread across the tropical
belt. In the tropical belt -- from parallel 33 North to parallel
33 South -- live 73 percent of the planet's population. In this
belt, food production barely accounts for 25 percent of the
world's total. In grains just 260 kilograms per capita. With the
help of modern chemistry, the tropical belt could be producing 58
percent of the world's food or 80 percent of the renewable energy
of bio-mass.

The tropical belt has the economic advantage of having plenty
of renewable energy embodied in products through the industry of
photosynthesis. Some 3,000,000 vehicles in Brazil do not burn
fossil fuels, but run 100 percent on sugar cane ethanol. The
remaining cars run on unleaded gasoline. When mixed with 20
percent ethanol, gasoline does not require the poisonous anti-
knocking lead agent.

A pulp mill producing 500,000 tons a year requires 500,000
hectares in Scandinavia, and 1.6 million in British Columbia. A
similar mill requires only 80,000 hectares in Brazil. This is
because the trees most suitable for paper -- Pinus and Eucalyptus
-- grow so much faster in the belt than elsewhere. The cost of
replanting trees has been put at US$200 an acre in the tropics
and $400 an acre in temperate regions. Twenty-five tons per
hectare is considered good biomass production for Eucalyptus. Our
record is 156 tons a hectare. Since we have no coal we burn
Eucalyptus as wood charcoal.

After pressing the sugar cane, the refuse matter is burned to
generate electricity. Ethanol distillation is dirty business. The
distilleries filter the mineral-rich effluents and spread them in
the sugar cane fields as fertilizer.

The biomass industry does not touch the CO2 stored in fully
grown natural forests. It just turns some of it around. The CO2
liberated is offset by the CO2 absorbed by the growing sugar cane
and eucalyptus. CO2 out by combustion, oxygen out by Eucalyptus
and sugar cane growing.

There is much more about agbiotech (agriculture
biotechnology). By the time the whole business come of age, the
advantage will be to countries located in the tropical belt. Time
for Dr. B.J. Habibie to have a word with the boys and girls at
university.

OSVALDO COELHO

Bandung, West Java