Good morning,

Are there any people in the South Texas - Corpus Christi area making biodiesel?

Which methods are you using? Are there semi regular meetings to share info and learn new technologies?

Anyone growing Jatropha Curcas here? Anyone with land available for Jatropha Curcas?

Anyone making bioplastics?

email clcheek@yahoo.com

houston seems much more active in biodiesel. sure wish i could find more people in the corpus area looking to get into it...

anyone at all in Corpus Christi doing BD? even with WVO?

anyone smell a wide open market somewhere?

muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhhaaaa

You should look in to becoming a distributor here in C.C.  Need a partner?

shawnm:

You should look in to becoming a distributor here in C.C.  Need a partner?

got any land? otherwise the business would be picking up wvo and all of the rigamarole of turning it into biodiesel. I'd much prefer to grown my own and leave out all of the extra steps with Jatropha Curcas. (i have a small orchard growing now and hoping to make it up to about 50 acres).

Clint

email me at clcheek@yahoo.com and we'll talk more of it.

Hi,

 I just started a little over 200 plants from seed in College Station, Texas.  They are about 8 days old and about 6-7 inches tall.  I have one acre near Port Lavaca, Texas where we will be planing them, as well as another 300 that will be ready to plant in a few more weeks.  That will give us 500 Jatropha curcas plants on one acre.  We will be installing a drip irrigation system as well, using water from a windmill that is onsite and producing about 1100 gallons of water a day.

 The big plan is to have at least a few of these plants survive the winter here and still produce in the spring.  The plants produced from the seeds produced from these plants will likely be able to survive winters (which are short and mild, usually) here in South Texas.  It's just a little "survival of the fittest" game.  If we can develop a strain of seed that survives in Port Lavaca, then we will have something that can be grown on hundreds of thousands of acres in South Texas.  At this point, we don't plan to be an oil producer, just a seedling producer.  We plan to license the use of our seedlings without allowing the planting of seeds grown from the plants.  This is early in the game and those who get into it early will have a better chance of success than those who wait too long.

I'd love to hear from anyone else who is growing Jatropha curcas in Texas. 

 I am open to any suggestions or comments.

Patrick J. Janis, 

College Station, Texas 

hi Patrick,

just my opinion here, but after you sell a plant or seed to someone, you cannot determine what they do with the plant, the fruit or seeds it produces. I've checked into how to license for just that exact purpose, you can, for $75.00, obtain a single site nursury to grow and sell JC, in Port Lavaca or anywhere else. I too am growing saplings, a little further south than you, just looked at 5 acres up by port lavaca too. I have just under 100 in planters right now. 200 seeds i'll be planting this week and 1000 on the way. (bought off of ebay).

i doubt very seriously you can 'license' anyone to do or restrict what they do with an item after you sell it to them. and i dont understand why you would want to either, unless you're trying to create a JC monopoly in that part of Texas? there are way too many sources to obtain seeds from to do that. they are for sale all over this forum, craigslist, ebay and at least 30,000 websites from india and central america and africa.

you do have a great plan on selecting the most hardy strains though, i'll be doing the same with a few more plants this winter as well. I just put in a bid on 25 acres near Banquete, Tx. and have offers of interest in a share/lease (20 year type) of an additional 3 tracts (8 acre, 8 acre, and a 6.5 or 7 acre) in Orange Grove. Looks like a busy rest of the summer, fall and spring for me.

Clint

Clint,

 Thanks for your reply.  Here is how the licensing works.  After I spend time and money trying to develop a strain that will grow well in Texas, using seeds that were sold to me with no strings attached, the whole thing works with contracts.  Grain growers do this all the time.  When I sell the seedlings (30-60 days old), the purchaser signs a contract that states that none of the seeds produced from the plants that I sell can be used for planting.  There is usually a time limit (several years).  This ensures that the time and money I have spent will not be stolen away by a large producer.  It also will allow me the ability to sell the rights to whomever I choose.  I don't want a monopoly on Jatropha curcas, but I do want to protect my investment. 

 I just planted another 180 seeds yesterday and have ordered another 1000.  Also plan to buy polyethylene nursery bags to grow the next bunch.

 Patrick

hi again Patrick,

just completed planting another batch myself. yeesh but its humid today, the contract sounds well and good, and i dont mean to give you any grief over it but i think you're headed down the wrong road with this. as a buyer of seeds, i for one would never sign anything that limited me  in any way whatsoever. you may find most people are the same way, but i suppose you may find those that will buy and sign, but you had better have the bonafides on hand to show people that this particular strain is so cold tolerant that you guarantee if the tree dies, you'll replace it, at no cost whatsoever to the customer.

its like buying land and not getting the mineral rights to it. (just my opinion here), i'd not purchase any land where exxon could come in and say hey, we've learned from satellite imagery that there are 30 trillion gallons of oil under your land so we're taking it.

or selling a gun to someone and saying you can only hunt on every other tuesday. to be honest, if i buy something, no one is going to tell me what i can or cannot do with it (i'll keep it within the frame of the law myself).

the biggest issue i see with it is enforcement though. how in the world are you going to visit each and every customer, say you sold 100 seeds to fred, are you going to visit him each year and ensures he only has 100 trees? search the country records to find if he's purchased other land, go to the land and inspect it to see if he had planted seeds from plants that came from the seeds he first bought from you?

Microsoft has the ability to pre-program their software to find out if you have a registered copy. the city and county and state have the ability to catch you speeding, or drunk driving or any of the other various laws you can break.

i dont see how you expect to enforce, or even could consider restraining trade on someone you sell products to.

protecting your investment is one thing, but restraint of trade is another. why do you think people will buy your seeds? to plant them? or make biodiesel from them? you can tell which they will do by the amount they order, or guess anyhow, if they order 30,000 seeds, its probably to make biodiesel. but then again, it could be to plant 25 acres with.

i truly do like your idea but i think its going to be impossible to get the customer to sign anything restricting what he can or cant do, unless your particular strain of JC is so cold tolerant, and by far exceeds the expected 47% oil content, and has a germination rate of 97% or better. all of which is guaranteed of course, in writing, with you willing to replace trees killed by frost, replace trees with less oil and seeds that do not germinate.

I think you may have much more sucess growing the trees and either selling the seeds to a bioreactor plant to turn into biodiesel. or just sell them outright to people wanting to start their own farms.

i realize i could be wrong, you may be a geneteiist (spelling?) and can do some or most of the above recommendations. I try my best to keep an open mind, the only way I would buy from a seller with those kinds of restrictions would be with the guarantees. otherwise, i can get a metric ton of seeds for 260 bucks plus shipping from India, and those are like 7th generation or better so the hardiness is already proven.

best of luck with it though

Clint

Hi again Clint,

 The hardiness of the plants from the Indian seeds are not yet proven in Texas.  I am sure they can withstand the heat and even drought, but I am concerned about the cold.  It typically gets below freezing in South Texas (Corpus, Port Lavaca) every year.  The Jatropha supposedly drops its leaves if it gets down to 31F.  If it drops its leaves it will not be very productive in spring.  By growing hundreds of these plants through a winter, we will probably find at least a few that were genetically pre-disposed to survival at a lower temperature than its weaker cousins.  If we only harvest from those that don't drop their leaves, we will be harvesting the better crop. 

Also, take a look at this website:  www.ams.usda.gov/pvpo , it gives details about protecting your new variety of seed from unauthorized use for a period of time.  It is like a copyright on a seed.  This is the kind of protection I will seek.  I think you would be wise to check into it, too.  The groundbreaking work that you and I and others are doing in Texas is valuable and should be recognized as such.

 Maybe we can get together at some point to look at each others' crops and talk Jatropha.

 Patrick

hey Patrick, whoa! had a look at the link you provided. thanks so much for that info. the cost are something to consider, but i guess it's about the same as putting in a 2nd well to ensure you have viable water. but its still pretty great. im not sure it actually gets below 32 every single year for Corpus Christi, maybe if you include the wind chill factor.

we had 6 inches of snow on christmas eve, dec 24th 2002, thats the 3rd time in 48 years that its snowed in corpus christi. I've lived here for most of my life. while it does dip below freezing now and again, its not constant, and if all of the GW proponents are correct, there is a lesser chance of it happening again each year. im still sort of unsure whether i'll sell the seeds to a biofacility or just obtain the oil and sell it or what.

Im still waiting on finding out about the TVLB loan for the 25 acres, and waiting on 3 people to come up with their own research to make a decision about them offering up 8 acres each in some kind of lease thing. together that would give me 48 acres (one of the guys is actually 7 acres, not 8). 48 acres would probably be way too much for one guy to handle.

thanks again for the link though. its something to keep in mind should i decide to try to assist TAMU or UofF with their research. I had started a blog but I think I'll start just a spreadsheet instead to start tracking data of that sort.

Clint,

do you know of anyone else in south texas who is trying this crop besides you and me?  If there are enough of us, we could start a co-op and share the cost of processing the seeds, etc.   My family is not in the farming business now, but my grandparents were sharecroppers in the 1920s thru the 1960s.  they started out in rivera (kingsville area), and ended up in Bloomington (Victoria County).  They raised mostly cotton and some corn.  It was hand picked (by my parents and their siblings).  Then it was taken to a co-op for processing and grading.  It was then sold to the co-op.  then the co-op would buy other members' crops then find a buyer to buy the bulk at a good price and the co-op members shared in the profits. 

 It would be really cool if we could get a co-op for our jatropha.

 Just my rambling thoughts,

Patrick

no one i know of. i've been around the victoria area quite a bit. went to college there, worked at formosa, lived in seadrift a while and drove through bloomington to get to class. looked at 5 acres a few weeks back on 87 about 4 miles out from Vic. wasnt much impressed, plus its quite the drive to come up every weekend. i'll just hope for more opportunity around here. and some cheap land