Afghanistan Should Grow Fuel, Not Drugs
Poppies into ethanol? It's possible and could be the key to an economic boom in Afghanistan.
Whether or not poppies can effectively be turned into fuel, another option is persuading farmers to switch to more recognised biofuel crops, such as switchgrass and other “second-generation” biomass products. Many of these crops can grow in unforgiving conditions — an essential requirement given that much of Afghanistan’s farmland isn’t particularly fertile. And because they’re inedible, as long as they replaced only poppies, their cultivation wouldn’t have a detrimental effect on food prices. You can read more about the prospects for the production of biomass in both Afghanistan and Pakistan here.
There’s no reason why Afghan farmers can’t be persuaded to give up cultivating opium poppies if they’re presented with a better offer. They don’t grow opium because they’re eager to meet the needs of Western heroin addicts. They grow it because it’s profitable, and the fact that rising grain prices are causing some farmers to switch from poppies to wheat shows they’re perfectly receptive to market forces. And even if the profit margins from biomass crops were roughly the same as those from poppies, farmers would surely rather grow a crop the West wants than one that’s the subject of eradication efforts by NATO.
If the production of biomass could be made viable, it wouldn’t be just the farmers who would benefit. Refineries to turn the crops into fuel could be built locally, providing much-needed jobs, while the Afghan economy as a whole would benefit from lower fuel costs. And if production reached sufficient levels the country could move into the export market, lessening its dependence on foreign aid.
It’s a bit of a stretch to start talking about Afghanistan as the Saudi Arabia of biofuels. And it might seem an unfortunate analogy, given the precarious position the west is in with its reliance on Middle East oil. The fact is that oil wealth has rendered a generation of young Saudis feckless and open to radicalization, and Saudi money is financing terrorism. However, in this case the Afghans would be producing the raw materials themselves rather than growing corrupt, idle and embittered while foreigners do all the work.
The transformation of Afghanistan’s agricultural practices, and the construction of a new industry from scratch, aren’t going to happen overnight. Years of trials will likely be needed to develop crops that provide sufficient biomass yield, and markets would probably have to be regulated for a time to ensure that biomass crops were more attractive to farmers than poppies, but not so lucrative that food production suffered. (Regulation and subsidies are an anathema to many, but whatever policies the international community pursues in Afghanistan are going to entail large measures of both.) A fraction of the millions of dollars currently being pumped into the country by the international community would pay for further research and the establishment of trial farming and processing schemes.
Security would of course remain an issue. Neither the Taliban nor Aghanistan’s criminal gangs are going to take kindly to the prospect of a major source of funding drying up. But they have to be tackled regardless, and no new policy could be less effective than the current one of eradicating the poppy without necessarily providing alternative sources of income for farmers: not only is it ineffective, it drives those who depend on the crop to make a living into the arms of our enemies.
Difficult as the task of turning Afghanistan into a major biofuels producer would be, the potentially huge benefits of creating a booming legitimate industry that could help to meet the world’s energy needs while at the same time undermining the narco-terrorists of the Taliban, demand that we at least try. The West has nothing to lose, and possibly a great deal to gain.
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Mike McNally blogs at Monkey Tennis Centre.
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15 Comments
1. Joshua:On the contrary, the West does have something to lose. Even if this idea works, sooner or later we are going to have to let the Afghan biofuel industry evolve on its own, and who’s to say it won’t end up looking more or less like the Saudi oil industry over time? Or perhaps worse yet, effectively taken over by the Taliban, the gangs or the warlords? That would defeat a major purpose of exploring alternative fuels in the first place, which is to achieve energy independence from a part of the world that is otherwise more troublesome than it’s worth.
Jun 18, 2008 - 5:47 am 2. Edmund Jenks (MAXINE):What?!
We couldn’t look upon poppies as a type of switchgrass?
Bacteria based ethanol production from anything, even poppies, just might be the answer.
http://maxine-log.blogspot.com/2008/01/its-time-to-buck-up-and-implement.html
Jun 18, 2008 - 6:21 am 3. Dark Helmet:Decriminalize drugs, give as much as any one wants to anyone who wants it and the problem will solve itself through natural selection.
As long as there is a demand, there will be supply. As long as there is a profit in it, people will supply it.
There is just no reason not to take the profit motive out of it and let things work themselves out.
Jun 18, 2008 - 6:27 am 4. Wearyman:Helmet, you are missing the point.
The primary issue is that the Taliban and Warlords are buying the poppies from the farmers, turning them into drugs, and then selling them to finance their violence. Legalizing Heroin does NOT dry up the market for the Taliban. If anything it will get bigger initially, since there are so few sources for Heroin given it’s current illegality.
Think about it for a bit longer than you obviously have; It’s not like the major Pharmco’s are going to start churning out Heroin on the day the ban is lifted. Even if they want to get involved in making seriously harmful drugs like Heroin (unlikely), it would take them YEARS to get tooled-up, hooked into the supply chain and producing. Not to mention the MOUNDS of regulation that would surely come along with such a change.
No, the best thing is to reduce the poppy supply by showing the farmers how to make MORE money selling a legal crop. Whether bio-fuels is the answer is something that market forces and brave investors will have to determine.
Jun 18, 2008 - 7:26 am 5. Mike:Joshua,
Maybe you didn’t read the second page – I think I addressed your concern:
‘It’s a bit of a stretch to start talking about Afghanistan as the Saudi Arabia of biofuels. And it might seem an unfortunate analogy, given the precarious position the west is in with its reliance on Middle East oil. The fact is that oil wealth has rendered a generation of young Saudis feckless and open to radicalization, and Saudi money is financing terrorism. However, in this case the Afghans would be producing the raw materials themselves rather than growing corrupt, idle and embittered while foreigners do all the work.’
I should add that, alongside whatever development programs the West pursues, I think we need to continue killing lots of bad guys.
Jun 18, 2008 - 7:54 am 6. ck:Why would they trade a profitable business for one that requires subsidies?
Jun 18, 2008 - 8:35 am 7. Dark Helmet:Wearyman,
Don’t make assumptions about how much thought I have put into something.
The only way for drug abuse to end is for the demand to dry up. The only way for the cash cow to bleed out is to make it legal.
That’s the bottom line.
Jun 18, 2008 - 8:39 am 8. Morton Doodslag:We all act as if there was no poverty in Islam, there’d be no violent Jihad against us. But it’s clear that when sufficient funds and opportunities are provided,uslims wage Jihad. Could it possibly have anything to do with Islam?!
We are busily working to “fix” the utterly broken societies of Islam without destroying first the cancer which brought them low in the first place, and that is Islam. It is Islam, and the ready unearned trillions which the accident of oil provides which has unleashed this 21st century nightmare of Islamic Jihad. When the rotting caliphate, the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed, the incompetent society of Islam had run out of options. It had failed utterly wherever it reared its ugly head — but then oil was discovered beneath the burning sands of Arabia. This began Islam’s century long trudge back from the brink of death.
Now, nearly a century later, we see what the wealthiest Muslim nations do when given sufficient funds and opportunity: they wage Jihad to spread Islam in the world. Whether it’s the Sunni brand, as followed in Saudi, or Shiite, as followed in Iran, the result is roughly equivalent. Terror regimes in Riyadh and Tehran fund global war to spread Islam. Jihad isn’t just the strapping on of bombs, or the flying of planes into skyscrapers. It also involves sending drugs to the infidel to poison his children, the building of Mosques in infidel lands, the paying for Imams in those Mosques, the buying off of politicians, the funding of chairs within Western Academia, the filing of lawsuits to subvert and demoralize, the demanding of “rights” and “respect” for Muslims from infidels, and even the selling of baked goods by little Muslim girls in support of the local Mosque or “Islamic community center”.
It’s ALL jihad. It’s all designed to subvert and harm the so-called “infidels”, and to augment the war camp of Islam. Every Muslim is axiomatically involved.
Poppies for biofuels is a ludicrous suggestion for all of the above stated reasons – but I also suspect that the energy yield from poppies would require gas to be several hundred or thousand dollars per barrel before it makes any sense economically.
Several axioms occur to me;
One cannot extract much blood from a stone, and one cannot extract much energy from a desiccated crop grown several miles above sea level on alluvial moraine.
One cannot expect the tiger to change his stripes, nature forbids it. And one also should not expect Muslims to change their genocidal supremaciet minds as long as they remain Muslim. Islam forbids it.
Jun 18, 2008 - 8:52 am 9. Eric:According to the U.N., Afghan farmers make about $2,000 per acre growing poppies. Which ever crop you want to substitute for poppies, or even buy the poppy crop from the Afghan farmers to turn it into bio-mass, you will have to equal or beat the $2,000 per acre price. Now that’s capitalism! Of course, if the Taliban and/or the warlords threaten the farmers to sell ONLY to them, then what do you do? Well, you can go and kill ALL the warlords. We are already trying to kill all of the Taliban.
Jun 18, 2008 - 9:49 am 10. Javelin:I think the money they can make off of opium is only a thousand times more lucrative than the skimpy receipts from growing biomass crops.
Jun 18, 2008 - 11:42 am 11. abu al-fin:It won’t be long before any plant can make opium, coca, THC, or any other desirable drug of recreation or abuse. Genetic engineering won’t stop after it learns to grow biosynthetic fuels and replacement human organs.
It’s only a question of whether genetic engineering will get there first or whether nanotechnology pharma-factories will bet them to the punch. Everyone will be able to grow or make as much dope in the privacy of their homes or storage units as they want.
Better think of another approach to dealing with drugs than suppression of farmers.
Jun 18, 2008 - 1:49 pm 12. david levavi:Sorry to be so cynical but any plan to curtail or prevent the growing of poppies in the Muslim world is shortsighted.
Do we rally want to get Muslims off dope? Is it in our best interest? Aren’t we better off if they remain narcotized?
Heroin and opium addicts aren’t inclined toward aggression. In fact, they aren’t inclined toward expending energy for any reason. Isn’t Mohamed nodding preferred to Mohamed raging?
Before Western engineers arrived in the Middle East with their noisy drilling equipment in the early Twentieth Century, the Muslims had been sound asleep for centuries. Bad enough we woke the bastards up, why clear their dope fuzzed minds?
Teach them modern farming methods so they can increase their poppy yield per acre say I. May Allah bless them with bumper crops.
Jun 18, 2008 - 1:51 pm 13. myna:Afghans should plant jatropha instead of poppies. Oil from jatropha plant is best right now as alternative fuel especially because of the rising crude oil prices.
Jun 19, 2008 - 10:26 am 14. deguello:Afghans should grow fuel not drugs?Americans should raise straight kids, not dopeheads!
Jun 20, 2008 - 8:07 pm 15. Paparon:Why not grow wheat, barley or corn for cash. Corn is $8 a bushel stateside>
Jun 21, 2008 - 9:04 pm