Here’s some interesting news on the alternative energy front. Earlier this summer, British Petroleum dumped $90 million dollars into research of a weed known as jatropha.

Here’s what BP found: The jatropha plant is a large shrub filled with golf ball-size oily green fruit. It can grow almost anywhere, doesn’t require an abundant water supply, it’s inedible, resistant to pesticides and is essentially worth squat to those surrounded by it. In India, they use the plant to build hedges.

But as it turns out, jatropha oil can be poured right into a biodiesel tank. Making it “potentially” one of the first truly low-impact, high efficiency, natural biofuel sources. And it’s cheap…

Thanks WSJ

At $43 per barrel, that makes jatropha fuel almost half as cheap as oil. A highly efficient, easy-to-grow biofuel source that has no direct effect on the global food supply? We expect more money will be flowing in this direction very soon.

“Why can’t farmers make a profit,” asks a reader, “and why are they leaving farms in droves?

“The answer is easy: government subsidies. Over the last 70 years, government money has ruined farming, and made it a ridiculously costly, wasteful business, subsidizing the big at the expense of the small, who will always be the backbone of national character. About 10% of subsidy recipients receive over 80% of all subsidies.

“Has the money done any good? Just drive through the countryside and see, where rotting silos and milk barns mark the graves of dairies past, and no dirt is to be seen anywhere, because there are no farmers to turn it over. America now imports huge amounts of food. Why? Because conventional American agriculture is so successful? No, because it’s a costly dinosaur kept alive long past its time by government money.

“The new agriculture is coming with low inputs, intensive grazing and few chemicals. Small farms thrive on it, making huge profits where the high-input, industrialized, chemical-addicted, government-trained and subsidized farmers couldn’t grow a turnip. The old agriculture is dying, and the silly ethanol programs are merely symptoms of its disease.

“The sooner it dies, the better we will all eat, and the more farmers will be able to return to the land.”

Cheers,

Addison Wiggin

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