I encountered with various things while I have worked as a development doctor for developing countries for more than 30 years in 70 countries. Among them, what I was most impressed is to know the fact that we can extract a clean energy (oil) that could be used for cars from Jatropha curcas seeds. The encounter occurred in a village near the Mt. Kilimanjaro of Tanzania in 2004 through a local NGO called Kakute Limited when we were conducting a research with the Presidential office. I knew the moment I saw people extracted oil from Jatropha seeds and light a lamp that Jatropha BDF business can be useful for poor countries in Africa and Asia.

After I got back from Tanzania, I found an article saying that Japanese troops tried to move tanks by Jatropha oil during the World War II, and another article saying that Mercedes-Benz and British Petroleum jointly worked to run a C-class Mercedes with 100% Jatropha oil. As soon as I read those two articles I thought Jatropha BDF can really be used to help combating poverty in Asian and African countries, and decided to commit myself to promote Jatropha BDF business. I first encouraged the leaders of developing countries to plant Jatropha through the projects conducted by JDI, the mother company of JBEDC, however leaders could not believe the profitability of Jatropha and did not put into action. I also met with farmers and asked them to plant Jatropha, however they also could not believe whether Jatropha seeds can be really sold. In order to make people take action, I founded JBEDC and affiliated companies in developing countries, and decided to plant Jatropha trees by myself and directly buy seeds from farmers. By today, JBEDC has founded affiliated companies in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Abu Dhabi, and continue promoting the cultivation of Jatropha and production of bio-energy.

Because Jatropha oil is not edible, and the plant can be cultivated in infertile land or dry area where competition over land with other crops is unlikely, Jatropha became very popular as the new hope of “Green Energy”. In the future, we are also planning to promote cassava, the raw material of bio-ethanol which could be the alternative energy for fossil fuel oil, and also could be cultivated in infertile dry land as Jatropha. JBEDC will continually work to increase the production of “Green Energy” in belief of Jatropha and Cassava will become the savior for developing countries. Therefore I would like to ask a continuous support and cooperation from everyone. In addition, we are planning to start a plantation volunteer and foster parent volunteer for Jatropha seedlings. Once the volunteer project is launched, please sign up for the Jatropha plantation tour and experience the bio-energy production by yourself. Private companies, international aid agencies, and Japanese government which do not show interest when we first started promoting Jatropha, are now supporting and investing in the bio-energy development process. We are hoping that this progress will contribute to developing countries’ progress too.

Japan Bio-Energy Development Corporation (JBEDC)
President Dr. Shoichi Kobayashi