An initial 15 companies have informed the Department of Agriculture (DA) that they need a total of 725,300,000 hectares of land for planting with crops for biofuel feedstock, which would require an investment totalling P34,085 billion.

In their latest report to Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, the DA Biofuels Feedstock Group led by Marriz Agbon said these proposed investments would generate an estimated 725,300 new direct jobs in the farm sector.

Agbon declined to name these 15 companies on the ground that their projects are in various stages of negotiation, but said these proposed deals would involve the planting of biofuel feedstock like sugarcane, cassava, jatropha, corn, oil palm and coconut.

The negotiations involve the participation of local companies in partnership with foreign investors from Australia, Japan, the United States, China, United Kingdom, Germany and India, Agbon said.

These investments would involve a total of P19.185 billion on the agricultural side and P14.9 billion on the plant or infrastructure side, he added.

He said these investors are planning to set up plants in the Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley, Western Visayas, Zamboanga Peninsula, Northern and Southern Mindanao and the Davao region either through straight purchases, lease arrangements, contract growing or joint ventures.

In all these arrangements, he said, farmers stand to earn more through profit sharing, guaranteed income packages or straight purchases of harvested crops, and benefit from new planting technologies that would create more jobs and boost production.

Last January, President Gloria Arroyo signed into law Republic Act 9367 or the Biofuels Act, which aims to ease the country's addiction to imported, dollar-draining and pollution-generating petroleum products.

Yap earlier said that the ever-growing global demand for crops-based alternative fuels would energize Philippine farms, increase the profitability of small stakeholders in the agriculture sector, and reduce the country's dependence on imported energy sources.

The DA was among the key agencies tasked to draw up the implementing rules and regulations or IRR of the Biofuels Law, which mandates the preblending over a specific period of 1% coco methyl esther (CME) or coco biodiesel in diesel-fed vehicles and 5% of ethanol in gasoline-fueled ones. .

The Biofuels Act would give an extra boost to the sugar industry that is now on the mend and would also help reinvigorate the coconut industry with sales of coco diesel to oil companies projected at P3.5 billion a year, Yap had said.

The country has 3.5 million coconut farmers and 56,000 sugarcane farmers.
According to a report done by the Asian Institute of Petroleum Studies Inc., the reduction in fuel consumption as a result of the enactment of the Biofuels Act would save the country P17.3 billion a year.

Studies done by the Philippine Coconut Authority show, for instance, that with the local consumption of diesel pegged at 7 billion liters a year, the Philippines would need at least 70 million liters of coco biodiesel in compliance with the provisions of the Biofuels Act.