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