It began innocently enough, like any other workshop — a large university auditorium, speakers from the UN, business, government and an obscure member of the Thai Royal family ringing an auspicious gong.
However, the delegates were not investors or scientists but raw-boned, Thai rice farmers, plied with a lavish two-day luncheon and meditation sessions to hear that if they chose to grow jatropha they could make profits within 12 months.
They were even offered free seeds to start their own plantations and 'grow a golden egg that could be passed from father to son to grandson'. However, unlike the fabled Jack and the Beanstalk, the Thai farmers would be giving up much more than a cow for their handful of seeds and promise of untold wealth.
Much has been written about jatropha, the so-called miracle plant that the New York Times recently called the darling of the second-generation biofuels, and which Goldman Sachs, the world's largest investment bank, has identified as a promising source of biofuel in the future.
Farmers in China, India, Indonesia and Africa are rushing to plant jatropha in what can only be compared to the mass hysteria to grow tulips in the Netherlands in the late 17th century — before the speculative bubble burst.
However, some say the farming of jatropha is a future natural disaster waiting to happen, especially if hybrid strains outgrow plantations and propagate wildly across farmlands, contaminating soil and displacing native species — and eventually people.
While the monstrous, animal-like plants of the post-apocalyptic novel The Day of the Triffids remain science fiction, it is worth noting that the jatropha plant propels insects and animals, lives up to 50 years, and that its cuttings take root quickly and easily.
Some claim jatropha will relieve poverty throughout the Third World by allowing the poor to cash in on a low maintenance cash crop that grows anywhere, including rocky and saline soil. There is no evidence though that it can produce seeds under these conditions, especially in the longer term. In fact, there has to date been no substantive research into the long term benefits or effects of farming jatropha.
With corporations currently sizing-up jatropha as a socially acceptable biofuel alternative to fossil fuels, what we do hear is the hype of a potential billion dollar industry — that is billions of dollars of savings and profit for corporations and governments.
Air New Zealand, in collaboration with Rolls Royce and Boeing, claims