Storytelling Lede-Form Stories

Storytelling Lede-Form Stories

Article #1

September 9, 2007

Mali’s Farmers Discover a Weed’s Potential Power

By LYDIA POLGREEN

KOULIKORO, Mali — When Suleiman Diarra Banani’s brother said that the poisonous black seeds dropping from the seemingly worthless weed that had grown around his family farm for decades could be used to run a generator, or even a car, Mr. Banani did not believe him. When he suggested that they intersperse the plant, until now used as a natural fence between rows of their regular crops — edible millet, peanuts, corn and beans — he thought his older brother, Dadjo, was crazy.

“I thought it was a plant for old ladies to make soap,” he said.

But now that a plant called jatropha is being hailed by scientists and policy makers as a potentially ideal source of biofuel, a plant that can grow in marginal soil or beside food crops, that does not require a lot of fertilizer and yields many times as much biofuel per acre planted as corn and many other potential biofuels. By planting a row of jatropha for every seven rows of regular crops, Mr. Banani could double his income on the field in the first year and lose none of his usual yield from his field.

Poor farmers living on a wide band of land on both sides of the equator are planting it on millions of acres, hoping to turn their rockiest, most unproductive fields into a biofuel boom. They are spurred on by big oil companies like BP and the British biofuel giant D1 Oils, which are investing millions of dollars in jatropha cultivation.

Countries like India, China, the Philippines and Malaysia are starting huge plantations, betting that jatropha will help them to become more energy independent and even export biofuel. It is too soon to say whether jatropha will be viable as a commercial biofuel, scientists say, and farmers in India are already expressing frustration that after being encouraged to plant huge swaths of the bush they have found no buyers for the seeds.

But here in Mali, one of the poorest nations on earth, a number of small-scale projects aimed at solving local problems — the lack of electricity and rural poverty — are blossoming across the country to use the existing supply of jatropha to fuel specially modified generators in villages far off the electrical grid.

“We are focused on solving our own energy problems and reducing poverty,” said Aboubacar Samaké, director of a government project aimed at promoting renewable energy. “If it helps the world, that is good, too.”

Jatropha originated in Central America and is believed to have been spread around the world by Portuguese explorers. In Mali, a landlocked former French colony, it has been used for decades by farmers as a living fence that keeps grazing animals off their fields — the smell and the taste of the plant repel grazing animals — and a guard against erosion, keeping rich topsoil from being blown away by the harsh Sahel winds. The Royal Tropical Institute, a nonprofit research institution in Amsterdam that has been working to develop jatropha as a commercial biofuel, estimates that there are 22,000 linear kilometers, or more than 13,000 miles, of the bush in Mali.

Jatropha’s proponents say it avoids the major pitfalls of other biofuels, which pose significant environmental and social risks. Places that struggle to feed their populations, like Mali and the rest of the arid Sahel region, can scarcely afford to give up cultivable land for growing biofuel crops. Other potential biofuels, like palm oil, have encountered resistance by environmentalists because plantations have encroached on rain forests and other natural habitats.

But jatropha can grow on virtually barren land with relatively little rainfall, so it can be planted in places where food does not grow well. It can also be planted beside other crops farmers grow here, like millet, peanuts and beans, without substantially reducing the yield of the fields; it may even help improve output of food crops by, among other things, preventing erosion and keeping animals out.

Other biofuels like ethanol from corn and sugar cane require large amounts of water and fertilizer, and factory farming in some cases consumes substantial amounts of petroleum, making the environmental benefits limited, critics say. But jatropha requires no pesticides, Mr. Samaké said, little water other than rain and no fertilizer beyond the nutrient-rich seed cake left after oil is pressed from its nuts.

The plant is promising enough that companies across the world are looking at planting millions of acres of jatropha in the next few years, in places as far flung as Brazil, China, India and Swaziland. A company based in Singapore has announced plans to plant two million hectares, about 4.9 million acres, of jatropha in the Philippines.

Here in Mali, a Dutch entrepreneur, Hugo Verkuijl, has started a company with the backing of investors and assistance from the Dutch government, to produce biodiesel from jatropha seeds.

Mr. Verkuijl, 39, an economist who has worked for nonprofit groups, is part of a new breed of entrepreneurs who are marrying the traditional aims of aid groups working in Africa with a capitalist ethos they hope will bring longevity to their efforts.

“An aid project will live or die by its funders,” Mr. Verkuijl said, but “a business has momentum and a motive to keep going, even if its founders move on.”

His company, Mali Biocarburant, is partly owned by the farmers who will grow the nuts, something he said would help the business to succeed by giving the farmers a stake.

It takes about four kilograms (about 8.8 pounds) of seeds to make a liter of oil, and Mr. Verkuijl will sign contracts with farmers to buy the seeds in bulk. The fuel he produces will cost about the same as regular diesel, he said — more than $1 a liter, which is about 1.06 liquid quarts. He will also return the nutrient-rich seed cake, left after the seeds are pressed for oil, to the farmers to use as fertilizer. He said he hoped to produce 100,000 liters of biodiesel this year and 600,000 a year by the third year.

Even if jatropha proves a success in Mali, it is still not without risks. If farmers come to see it as more valuable than food crops, they could cripple the country’s food production.

These kinds of worries led a recent United Nations report on biofuels to conclude that “the benefits to farmers are not assured, and may come with increased costs,” the report said. “At their worst, biofuel programs can also result in a concentration of ownership that could drive the world’s poorest farmers off their land and into deeper poverty.”

Article #2

September 9, 2007

Boys Cast Out by Polygamists Find Help

By ERIK ECKHOLM

ST. GEORGE, Utah — Woodrow Johnson was 15, and by the rules of the polygamous sect in which his family lived, he had a vice that could condemn them to hell: He liked to watch movies.

When his parents discovered his secret stash of DVDs, including the “Die Hard” series and comedies, they burned them and gave him an ultimatum. Stop watching movies, they said, or leave the family and church for good.

With television and the Internet also banned as wicked, along with short-sleeve shirts — a sign of immodesty — and staring at girls, let alone dating them, Woodrow made the wrenching decision to go. And so 10 months ago, with only a seventh-grade education and a suitcase of clothes, he was thrown into an unfamiliar world he had been taught to fear.

Over the last six years, hundreds of teenage boys have been expelled or felt compelled to leave the polygamous settlement that straddles Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.

Disobedience is usually the reason given for expulsion, but former sect members and state legal officials say the exodus of males — the expulsion of girls is rarer — also remedies a huge imbalance in the marriage market. Members of the sect believe that to reach eternal salvation, men are supposed to have at least three wives.

State officials say efforts to help them with shelter, foster care or other services have been frustrated by the boys’ distrust of government and fear of getting their parents into trouble.

But help for the teenagers is improving. In St. George, a nearby city where many of them wind up, two private groups, with state aid, have opened the first residence and center for banished boys. It will offer psychological counseling and advice on things they never learned, like how to write a check or ask a girl out politely, as well as a transitional home for eight who will attend school and work part time.

The polygamous settlement is largely controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and allies of its jailed prophet, Warren S. Jeffs, who is about to stand trial on charges of sexual exploitation.

Now 16, living with a sympathetic aunt and uncle, Woodrow is one of the luckier boys, though he rarely sees his parents and says, plaintively, “I really miss them.” Some boys end up in unsupervised group rentals they call “butt huts” because of the crowded sleeping, while others live in cars or end up in jail.

Utah officials say they realized the extent of the problem only about four years ago, when they learned that hundreds of boys from the sect were roaming on their own and often in distress. While most have construction skills to help earn a living, few have more than a junior high education.

“The house is a milestone, but it’s just a start,” said Paul Murphy, director of communications and policy for the Utah attorney general’s office who has worked with state and private agencies to muster help. “We’re finally reaching out, but it’s been painfully slow.”

The church settlement is essentially one town crossing the border, a jumble of walled compounds, trailers and farm fields at the base of spectacular red bluffs. Nearly all of the 6,000 residents follow the dictates of Mr. Jeffs, who they believe speaks for God; women wear ankle-length dresses, and children are taught to run away from outsiders.

Mr. Jeffs, 51, is in the Purgatory jail in southern Utah, his trial scheduled to start on Sept. 10 on charges of being an accomplice to rape, for his role in forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry an older cousin. He faces several other sex-related charges in Arizona.

But his allies still control the church, former members say, and teenage boys continue to trickle out of the community, by force or by choice.

“In part it’s an issue of control,” Mr. Murphy said of the harsh rules. But underlying the expulsions, he added, is a mathematical reality. “If you’re going to have plural marriage, you need fewer men,” he said.

Andrew Chatwin, 39, the uncle who took Woodrow in, left the sect 10 years ago. He explained how the expulsions usually happen: “The leaders tell the parents they must stop this kid who is disobeying the faith and Warren Jeffs. So the parents kick him out because otherwise the father could have his wives and whole family taken away.”

The sect, which has smaller outposts in other states, has no ties to the mainstream Mormon church, which outlaws polygamy.

Church leaders refuse to speak to the press, and the mayors of Colorado City and Hildale both declined to comment. Mr. Jeffs’s defense lawyer did not respond to calls or e-mail messages.

With Mr. Jeffs and other polygamists, the authorities in Utah and Arizona have prosecuted sexual crimes, but they have not pursued cases involving the neglect of teenagers, in part, Mr. Murphy said, because the boys invariably refuse to testify.

In April, six banished teenagers who brought what became known as the lost boys suit against church leaders agreed to a settlement in which $250,000 will be used to promote education and emergency support for expelled youths. The money will be raised through selling some of the church’s large property holdings, now in receivership because church officials never appeared in court to defend against this lawsuit and others. The court-appointed agent now controlling the properties also gave each of the plaintiffs three acres of church land.

One plaintiff was Richard Gilbert, now 22. He had to leave Colorado City at 16, he said, when he refused Mr. Jeffs’s order to drop out of the public high school.

“I absolutely believed I was going to hell,” Mr. Gilbert recalled.

For a time, Mr. Gilbert lived in the nearby town of Hurricane, where five boys rented a two-bedroom apartment but had as many as 19 sleeping over. Some boys, he said, had literally been dropped off with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

“A lot of guys go off the deep end,” Mr. Gilbert said. “For me, it meant a ton of alcohol and partying.”

Now he works in construction, has been married for a year and has a child.

Mr. Gilbert estimates that 100 boys from his school class, or 70 percent of them, have been expelled or left on their own accord; there is no way to verify the numbers. “There are a lot of broken-hearted parents, but you question this decision at the risk of your own salvation,” Mr. Gilbert said.

The problem of surplus males worsened in the 1990s when the late prophet Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs’s father, took on dozens of young wives — picking the prettiest, most talented girls, said DeLoy Bateman, a high school teacher who watched it happen.

Warren Jeffs, taking the mantle after his father’s death in 2002, adopted most of his father’s wives and married others, and also began assigning more wives to his trusted church leaders, former members say. Forced departures increased.

Shannon Price, director of the Diversity Foundation, an educational nonprofit group near Salt Lake City, estimates that 500 to 1,000 teenage boys and young men have left Mr. Jeffs’s sect in the last six years, based on the hundreds who have contacted her group and another nonprofit, New Frontiers for Families.