Sustainable food, water, energy and employment developments for Southern Mexico

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) December 15, 2011 --

Clean Development Projects Limited of London, UK in association with local Mexican companies Grupo Balvanera, the State and funded by an international business group, is developing a major sustainability project in the Mexican State of Veracruz. The project will develop an initial 40,000 hectares of organic and semi-organic agriculture to cultivate food crops to reduce the Mexican national food deficit and supply low carbon biofuels for transport and energy. Additionally, the consortium will be developing renewable powered desalination facilities and municipal waste water treatment and material recovery facilities. These projects will directly provide many thousands of jobs for the local people and tens of thousands more as the economy is bolstered.

Clean Development Projects Limited (CDP) is dedicated to delivering sustainability to developing communities around the world. To the company, sustainability must be holistic; not taking any one sector in isolation. And so the consortium will be looking at all four of the cited areas of life: food, water, energy and employment.

Veracruz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracruz) is in the South of the country and is known as a breadbasket for the nation but still has agricultural land which is neglected, even abandoned. The State is warm and has a high annual rainfall making the land verdant and lush.

Grupo Balvanera (http://www.balvanera.co.mx) is a long established corporation developing real estate and environmental services. Since established, it has focused on sustainable community planning by integrating surrounding communities to its master plan and focusing on the preservation of water resources, cultivation of green areas, creation of local jobs through its industrial parks and availability of low income housing by donating land. The State of Veracruz, in coordination with the Veracruz Institute of Bioenergy are leading the way in Mexico in developing green initiatives and promoting the regeneration of agriculture.

CDP will work with local landowners and the State to develop 40,000 hectares of land for the production of bioenergy and food crops. Currently Mexico has a developing deficit in food production, particularly in the national staple, corn (Reference: The Ecologist). The project will devote 10-30% of the land to food cropping in rotation by growing food crops beneath and between the energy crop trees. The cultivation will concentrate on clean, sustainable methods, eschewing agri-chemicals as far as possible, focusing on traditional methods such as using manure for fertilizer and co-cropping for pest suppression.

The project will re-introduce and promote many rare and even otherwise lost varieties of traditional crops, especially corn (maize). Many of these have been lost to modern commercial agriculture. The promotion of modern strains by international corporations has driven the older varieties out, but a number of these new strains are designed in such a way that the farmers must purchase new seed each year rather than keeping some crop back as seed. It is said that this has reduced the nutritional value of the crops grown and many of these new crops are not well suited to the local conditions and so demand increased fertilizers and irrigation.

The harvested energy crops will be used to produce biofuels for transport and energy. This will be supplemented by biogas produced from livestock manure. These fuels will be supplied to local users, especially haulage and public transport companies. The fuel will also be made available to town and village cooperatives for use in local applications, especially agriculture. The food crops will be split between the local discount food system and sales as value added organic food stuffs through city supermarkets and high class bodegas.

Some of the energy crops will be used to power desalination and municipal waste water treatment plants. These plants will provide much needed potable water for the local people, reduce sewage discharges and provide cottage industry in salt making. The plants will also be powered in part by solar and wind installations. The solid matter recovered from sewage processing will be used to generate supplemental power and the suitably processed residues will be used as fertilizer and soil enhancers.

All of the above is designed not only to provide food, water and energy, but the designs of these solutions also require labor and management. It is expected that more than 10,000 jobs will be directly created, possibly as many as 20,000. This will boost the local economy as well as that around the country as the additional food is circulated and the Pesos dissipate.

The development of the project will require an estimated $40,000,000 US to deliver. This is the first stage of a 10 year plan to develop or renovate as many as 1 million hectares of neglected agricultural land. This project will only utilize unused land which has previously been used for agriculture. No virgin land will be employed. The organic approach taken will also bolster local biodiversity where native plants are employed and greater habitat diversity is fostered.

The business group is focusing on offsetting their carbon footprint. With vast enterprises developing mineral reserves, this footprint is big. To that end alone, even if we ignore the other issues, it is imperative that the design of the project is such that the activities within it are clean and sustainable. That is one reason to concentrate on manual labor instead of mechanization.

From Osiel Castro de la Rosa, President of the Veracruz Institute of Bioenergy (http://www.veracruz.gob.mx):

“We have created the Veracruz Institute of Bioenergy (INVERBIO) to be an entity and a vehicle for the Government of Veracruz to develop sustainable and productive projects that focus on the production of biofuels.

“We have a responsibility and a commitment to promote and support the agricultural and economic development of the State as well as to develop a clean industry that will also benefit the environment and help offset Carbon emissions in the region.

“Our vision is to promote and develop a set of plans to generate wealth in the state and in the country through schemes of promotion, financing and association of companies that will participate in the biofuel industry and activate the development of technologies to generate electricity and produce clean fuels.

“We focus on sustainable concepts, and on projects that will limit pollution levels that will not harm our natural systems. Benefits are many, the State of Veracruz, as well as having a port of great importance for Mexico, it has big expanses of subutilized and abandoned agricultural land that can be reactivated with the productions of raw materials for biofuels.

“As a public-decentralized entity, INVERBIO looks to consolidate such projects and generate jobs, and improve living standards in the rural environment. The State and the Federal Government have set the incentives and the strategy to connect local farmers with the companies that have been invited to be a strategic part of the biofuel industry of the country.”

Please contact me on info@cleandevelopmentprojects.com for more information or visit http://www.cleandevelopmentprojects.com . You can also comment on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clean-Development-Projects-Limited/112799252117236

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