A district level workshop held on jatropha cultivation for bio diesel agriculture at DRDA hall in chatrapur, Orissa.

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Land allotment to the farmers seems to be the major hurdle for the Jatropha cultivation in the Ganjam district as well as in the state keeping in view of the identification of waste and barren land and selection of farmers.

It was felt at a district level workshop on the Jatropha cultivation and the bio-diesel production at DRDA hall in Chatrapur.

The production of the bio-diesel is considered to be one of the best alternatives to the non-renewable sources fuel and Jatropha cultivation is perhaps another option in this area to augment the fuel to meet the growing requirement.

The need for such kind of fuel is felt necessity at a time when the non renewable sources are going to exhaust.

While India is the sixth major country in fuel consumption in the world, it produces only 22 percent of the total fuel requirement as remaining 78 percent is being imported.

Jatropha cultivation was started in Orissa in the year 2004 and Orissa Nature Care Council (ONCC) has successfully cultivated 640 hectares in southern districts of Orissa.

The Govt. has already released it's guidelines to promote the Jatropha cultivation in the state keeping in view the total expected production of 14,000 KL per annum in utilization of 0.6 million hectares of waste land, 100 million man days of employment generation and an additional organic manure of 42,000 tonnes.

The main objective of the Govt.'s policy is to enhance economic growth through maximization production of bio-diesel with such objectives like; to put barren, uncultivated and fallow lands into effective use through raising of energy plantations, to enable poor and disadvantaged people, enable interested entrepreneurs to set up bio diesel production plants and to provide suitable marketing linkage to bio-diesel producers.

According to the ONCC reports, there is around 18 lakh hectares of waste and unused land in the state out of which 12,000 hectares located in the district of Ganjam which may be used for the Jatropha cultivation.

However, the allotment of the waste lands to the farmers seems to be a major issue and headache for the administrative and implementing agencies.

It was felt at the workshop that identification of the waste lands and out of these what kind of lands would be utilized for the Jatropha is very difficult.

Even the DRDA project director PK Dash was confused enough while discussing the various options relating to this issue as there was no clear cut policy guidelines available.

As per the present guidelines, there are some options for allotment of waste land to the people for various non-agricultural purposes but there was no such provision made specific for the Jatropha (bio-diesel) production in the state.