Green Fuels and INOCAS today announced an agreement to engage in the development of a sustainable fuels value chain in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Using macaúba in novel intercropping and agrosilvopastoral techniques, the partners intend to ensure future sustainable fuel production for distributed energy and land, marine and air transport sectors, as signatories of the Zona da Mata Biokerosene and Renewables Platform (an integrated biofuels and reforestation value chain promoted by the City of Juiz de Fora).
Green Fuels is establishing a biofuel production plant in the Zona da Mata, with the support of the UK Government Prosperity Fund. The agreement will provide saplings of macaúba and other native species, acquired from the nursery Viveiro Nativo, to INOCAS to establish Technical Demonstration Units (TDUs) in the Zona da Mata and Cerrado (savanna) biomes. It is expected that the program will directly benefit around 100 small family farmers and the entire rural value chain.
“Considering that the species of macaúba, Acrocomia aculeata, produces on average 4 times more per hectare in relation to other oilseeds, generates more jobs, can be produced in consortium with other crops or in silvopastoral regime and adapts to any producer from family to large entrepreneur, reducing the effects of rural exodus, and can be produced in a great diversity of soil and climate, it has the capacity of generating more sustainable income“
Johannes Zimple, CEO of INOCAS
This will be achieved through practical measurement of parameters such as UNSDG compliance, biodiversity, effect of land use change and productivity, to promote recovery of degraded pasture through sustainable land use combined with environmentally sensitive reforestation, supporting the replenishment of the region´s aquifers and river basins.
“Green Fuels will use these TDUs to inform Brazilian and international stakeholders as to the macaúba production model’s sustainability, and to differentiate it from unsustainable oil crops“
Manuel Luis M. Thompson-Flôres, CEO of Green Fuels Ventures América Latina.