Sweet sorghum holds sweet promise to the biofuel industry and the Filipino farmers

Sweet sorghum is considered one of the most promising biofuel feedstocks. A research team led by Dr. Roberto F. Rañola Jr. of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) revealed that bioethanol yield per hectare from sweet sorghum is comparable to that of sugar cane and better than cassava.

The team’s study, which was funded by the Department of Agriculture - Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR) showed that planting sweet sorghum for bioethanol production can provide farmers an income of P77,000/ha per year. The feedstock cost for the distillery of sweet sorghum can be as low as PhP12.55-14.07/liter of bioethanol based on the performance of open pollinated varieties (OPVs) at the Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU).

This is lower than the feedstock costs of sugar cane, cassava, corn and molasses per liter of bioethanol. The crop also promises substantial returns to farmers considering that it is of short duration, hardy, adapted to extreme weather conditions and requires minimal inputs like fertilizers and irrigation.

Rural households can also produce other products from sweet sorghum such as cane syrup, vinegar, basi or wine, jaggery, feed for livestock and even electricity from co-generation. In llocos, the necessary infrastructure already exists which would allow farmers to produce these other value-added products.

The research team’s financial analysis for establishing a 40-kiloliters/day capacity sweet sorghum bioethanol plant estimated the net present value (NPV) and the internal rate of return (IRR) to be P66.6 million and 21% respectively with a payback period of 9 years.

A related study conducted by Dr. Heraldo L. Layaoen of MMSU mentioned that sweet sorghum can produce 43-65 MT of stalks and 3.28-4.4 MT of grains per hectare. The farmers can sell the stalks for at least P550/MT, the grain for P8/kg and get a return of P61,000-72,000/ha per year with two cropping cycles.

This is higher than the returns from traditional crops such as corn and tobacco.

The research team stressed that the country stands to benefit from additional jobs, foreign exchange savings and cleaner environment. Sweet sorghum promises to provide a cheap and reliable source of bioethanol and should be promoted aggressively by the government if it wants its biofuels program to succeed.

Ethanol-blended gasoline has been shown to improve mileage with lower toxic emissions and can be sold at a lower price compared to unleaded gasoline. It will require 20 bioethanol plants to meet the ethanol-10 (E10) blend required under the Biofuel Law (RA 9367) that mandates a 22% decrease in dependence on fuel oil by 2010. (R. M. Fabro, S&T Media Service)