Each week I have to decide what I’m going to write about. My opening paragraph is normally spontaneous related to something that’s come up in the last few days, if not hours. It certainly is not something from a week ago, by then I will have forgotten whatever it was. Sometimes Rozanne or a friend makes a suggestion, long forgotten by the time my fingers (only two at a time) hit the keyboard.
Often subjects arise on a Sunday. Sunday mornings we lie on the bed enjoying our coffee while reading social media and for myself, essentially, The Spectator Magazine online. Of course, it comes out on Thursday, I save it for Sunday. Many probably consider it rather conservative but the Arts and Book section is very good. I also enjoy Aidan Hartley’s column having read his excellent book, The Zanzibar Chest. Non-fiction about himself and an amazing African rancher, his father. A book worth reading. Adrian contacted me by telephone a number of times when I visited Tanzania. The Tanzanian Government wanted to privatise their ranching company that was in total ruin. My role was to look for investors. The company had many properties, one of which was his fathers in the Kilimanjaro district. Adrian said rather than being privatised by sale, it should rather be returned to its rightful owners who had to surrender their land to the Government. I could sympathise with him having recently lost my own farms in Zimbabwe. I remember this conversation clearly, whilst staying at the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI). I think Ifakara is the mosquito capital of the world, myself and my travelling partner Han Derksen spent many nights there in our search for opportunities in Africa. Much more about Han later, we travelled together for many years.
To be honest, we read social media every day with Sunday being more indulgent in digestion. We take time over it rather than quickly swallowing. An online version is never as good as having paper on hand but it suffices, is cheaper and available on the date of publication. We have subscribed to other papers and magazines but they always arrive with us in Portugal anything up to 2 weeks late. We can buy UK newspapers in the village a couple of days old. Very expensive with little thought provoking content or real news. When in the Algarve you can actually get British papers on the same day of publication, unfortunately not the case for us “Hillbillies” up here in central Portugal. Nobody wants to read yesterday's news unless the prose is of good standard.
Getting back to last Sunday morning, I was reading an article in The Spectator where it said that if you were white, cis, and heterosexual, you are considered privileged. So I thought, I am two thirds privileged, but what the hell is “cis”. Have I missed out? I was sure it was not a dyslexic CSI agent. I, therefore, did what everyone does and looked it up on Google. It seems that if you are “cis” that means that you identify with the gender you were given at birth. It does not matter what your sexual orientation is later in life providing you identify with your birth certificate sex. This seems very logical to me and therefore makes me cis. It also makes me in many people's eyes privileged which is now treated seemingly as an inexcusable sin. It appears nowadays that sin comes in many forms which you have no control over whatsoever. Is this jargon about privilege, a means to undermine a normal person's confidence, intimidating you to take up those of others?
A couple of weeks ago at our Tuesday night drinks group, “Old Godgers” one and all, I declared I was binary in sexual orientation. Of course, the majority of us did not know what this meant. My knowledge of this term came about when at a luncheon, a lady kept referring to what I considered her daughter as “they”. How can one person be a “they”? Seemingly, now it can in certain quarters. Confused? The parents could only call her as “they”, the child, a girl, still had not decided on her sexual orientation, therefore non-binary. I of course looked up binary and non-binary sexual orientation on Google hence my enlightenment. How simple things were when we were young. My father had an early death, if I had told him I was non-binary, it could well have brought it about sooner by a good few more years.
Now, if I tell the Tuesday group that I am cis, this will certainly confuse them even more. I will have to explain. At least these terms along with their application open up a whole new set of discussion points for our group, many of the comments being totally unacceptable if made public in some quarters. Within our group, no one has outwardly said they are non-binary, therefore due to their colour, all are categorized as being cis and therefore privileged. I think they are aware of this, despite their lack of knowledge of the definition. Nearly all seem happy enough with their lot except one. Maybe he/she is keeping something hidden, surely if he/she is privileged he/she should be happy. Further, if you are privileged due to what nature has made you, are you ever allowed to be underprivileged? There are many things other than your colour or sexuality that determine privilege. Do these zealots not include poor health, poverty, bullying or war in their equation of categorising privilege. I think being born is a privilege, a free gift no matter what your colour or sexual orientation. In accepting this gift it is up to you to make the most of it, not attack those that are different to you either in their outlook to life or their aired personal views or sexual orientation. Of course, your personal views may differ to others but that was part of the gift, you have the privilege of having your own views. It appears now a certain group of so-called liberals find this unacceptable wanting to misuse the very privileges we were all given.
“Your views may remain unaired or even changed if you are intimidated, brainwashed or made to feel guilty. Protect and cherish your views while accepting that those of others may differ. As with everything in this world, there must be balance, even in thought and word.” - Peter McSporran
Am I too old fashioned, too un-liberal (is that a word) or just archaic? I leave you in regard to the above discussion with a verbatim quote Rozanne saw by someone called Mike on Twitter.
“I’m going to be a bit controversial here. Being double vaccinated to get into a club isn’t the end of the world. Being made to go and fight at 16 is. No wonder kids of today think they have it hard. Life is hard in general.” - Mike unknown.
In Zimbabwe, you were eighteen. Throughout African war zones, there are many instances of child soldiers. So damn sad.
Paddy’s Farm and Cat’s Piss
I soon settled into a routine on Paddy’s farm which is now known as Brundall Barn Farm. When I first arrived, as stated last week, we lived in the large manor house off Yarmouth Road, just outside Postwick which was known as Postwick Grange, I presumed this was the farm name then too. I suppose the name remained with the house and the farm changed its name to the steading and cottages where Paddy and I moved after chasing out the rats and other unwanted residents. We had some hard-drinking neighbours who worked as welders on the oil rigs in Scotland. Plenty of money to spend, low rent for a farm cottage, they seemed to celebrate when they got home on rotation. I do not think saving was something to worry about in their world.
Each day in the summer, it was normal farm work. For me a new experience seeing these huge pea viners at work. They made a combine harvester look insignificant in those days. I never worked on one, but was often sent to some farm by Paddy with a repaired hydraulic pump or on some less important errand on his behalf. Paddy being the master fixer of hydraulic pumps with each viner having many.
Sunday afternoons, if we were not working or late evenings we would visit a pub on one of the many canals on the Broads. There was also an excellent pub restaurant in Acle, which we frequented. Paddy kept his dry cows and young dairy cattle out on the Broads there which gave us an ideal excuse to drop in. It was quite upmarket, so we used to receive a number of looks due to our farm clothes. Perhaps it was our smell. If I wanted to impress a girl, I took her there. I washed and changed of course. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the establishment.
I used to complain about English beer to Paddy and his rugby playing friends, calling it “Cats Piss” due to the low alcohol content. Whitebread Bitter was only 3.6% I think, while others were as low as 3% at that time. In Scotland, we drank McEwans and Newcastle Brown, the latter being over 5% in those days. To get jolly on English beer, I used to tease my Norfolk friends that you had to move into the toilet to get rid of both the excess liquid and wind to complete the serious task. Paddy good-naturedly listened to this every time we went out, which was at least twice a week; once following rugby training and once normally over the weekend. One fine Sunday afternoon, I do not know why we were not in the fields, Paddy took me to a new pub by a canal. As it turns out, the canal is the only thing I remember that day. He volunteered to treat me, saying I could have as much beer as I liked with one stipulation, it would have to be the house special. Little did I know this beer, a lager, contained over 6% alcohol. When I stood up after a “good effort” on consumption my legs failed me. I could see the canal except it kept revolving up over my head. With Paddy’s assistance, I made it to the car with a couple of emergency stops on the way home. I never trusted Paddy’s ‘treats’ from that day on.
Despite Paddy’s beer prank on me, he was a great boss. Towards early September, I was now playing regularly for the North Walsham Rugby Club, from time to time my name appearing on the back pages of the local Norwich papers. Much to the awe of my co-farm workers who had no idea what rugby was. I would be told it was an unfit game for working men, fit only for toffs. I did not want to continue indefinitely as a farm labourer, so Paddy offered me a job to run the Sugar Beet Harvesting Co-op with harvesting commencing about that time. The Co-op consisted of a number of farmers West of Norwich who got together, similarly as did the Pea Co-op, to harvest and transport sugar beet. The beet would be harvested in rotation and stockpiled on-farm for collection as and when called on from the sugar factory at Cantley. Each farmer provided an operator of some kind, all experienced tractor drivers, along with a tractor and trailer. The specialised equipment for harvesting belonged to the co-op. My job was actually the dog's body. I would have a schedule for which field, on which farm should be harvested. Of course, everyone wanted their beet harvested early. Not so much for the money, but to enable them to prepare for the next crop. Dairy farmers liked to get their beet harvested as soon as the cows came off grass as they were fed the tops indoors. I would rise early. When I started, it was light when I set off to work but as Autumn advanced the mornings got colder and darker until we ended up both starting in the dark and finishing after last light. Shit, it was cold on a tractor! I would find myself looking for spares or some other excuse to avoid early morning tractor work. When I was not busy in my supervisory job, I drove a tractor and high lift trailer. The high lift trailers were to enable us to stack the sugar beet higher. As drivers were experts in the field with much experience, few trailers fell over in the high position, dangerous as a loaded trailer could also tip the tractor. I, to my embarrassment, did it once. “How could a supervisor tip a trailer?” the workers asked. I said it was easy. The actual lifter was forever breaking down. Paddy’s grumpy driver, the youngest on the team but very skilled, operated this. It was forever breaking down, which required me to stand over the driver making sympathetic noises while the operator fixed it. In those days the changeover from hand to mechanical harvesting was still very much in the development stage. That lifter was certainly not fully developed, we made many modifications.
In October, Paddy’s cousin Bill received his results informing me from his correspondence, I had not only passed the diploma but also the NDA. What a surprise! He offered me a lift to the graduation so duly at the end of October, Bill and I set off to our graduation in his Ford Anglia. I failed to inform my parents about my surprising success. I had not spoken to them since before leaving college nor did they have a clue where I was. I suppose when you are young and enjoying yourself, you do not give your parents the attention they deserve. Or perhaps, I never felt supported in my career direction and never felt the need to update them, because I perceived they would not care. Maybe this was an immature misperception.
Wider Consultancy and Busting the Jatropha Myth
While continuing to do work with local commercial farmers and banks, I found myself doing more consultancy work following the project we had successfully completed for the Libyans. One of the crops of interest being muted as the new “green” solution to fossil fuels was Jatropha. The Zambia Government, through EU funding (also supervision), commissioned me to look into the status of the biofuel industry in Zambia, along with making recommendations on which crops we should pursue in producing biofuels. A really broad brush of a consultancy. Obviously, I had to carry out a desktop study first to better understand what already existed. Interestingly, although sugar was a big crop in Zambia, they made no ethanol, unlike Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe could thank sanctions for this industry's growth. Much of the molasses produced in Zambia, the liquid residue from refining sugar used in making ethanol, was actually transported to South Africa for livestock feed or processing there. The common household name for molasses is treacle. We all had treacle on our bread when we were kids. I rarely see it now on the supermarket shelf. This was my first surprise, why did Zambia, a landlocked country that imported all of its fuel, not make ethanol? It did not take me long to work out. There appeared to be a lack of a clear cut policy on ethanol and the taxes pertaining to it, a major stumbling block. When I left Zambia in 2017 there was still no ethanol being produced although I believe a China run business was installing a plant.
Obviously, most of the other possible biofuel feedstocks being considered at that time were mostly food crops such as soya, maize, oilseeds, millets and sorghum, especially sweet sorghum. Timber and grasses were also being considered.
Oil palm was being investigated by a number of sponsors, one of which at a later date we carried out the feasibility study for. A local Zambian company started planting oil palm about that time experimentally. The area they chose, I thought climatically, was unsuitable.
My second surprise was D1 Oils Ltd. A recently listed company (2004) on AIM was claiming to have planted thousands of hectares of Jatropha in the country for the purpose of making biodiesel. They also claimed hundreds of thousands of smallholders were also involved in producing Jatropha for them. They even listed the claimed sites, most in very isolated parts of the country. Once completing the desk survey I set out on a grand tour of the whole of Zambia to see what was actually on the ground. The D1 sites were extremely hard to find if not impossible, while other companies were making claims of production, once again, in really inaccessible parts of the country. It did not take long for me to understand the reason. There was little appetite for those sponsors wanting their funding partners or shareholders visiting. Easy to show a few hectares on the outskirts of Lusaka as being small experimental plots reflecting what was purported to be going on in a massive scale in the far reaches of the country. So much deceit. Province after province I visited, starting with the Department of Agriculture asking for directions for the claimed farms. To no avail, often the Ministry people had not even heard of the companies.
Meanwhile, D1 had raised some $91million on AIM. We had to wonder where the money was going, not successfully growing Jatropha.
The outcome of this consultation was to give a presentation to the Ministry of Energy where my report was criticised claiming it contained falsehoods and unwarranted allegations discrediting bone fide investors. Of course, none of my critics had bothered to get off their arses to visit the field. No doubt they were benefiting from sitting at their desks supporting all the false claims. I was equally robust in my answers and they were shocked to find I was a new type of consultant. I told the client that it was not what they wanted to hear or even required to see written on behalf of unknown benefactors. Remember there were many companies looking, some successfully, for funds to grow Jatropha. I even got a letter from the then Minister of Energy saying my findings were flawed. After all, how could a company which lavished such good meals and funded so many seminars on Jatropha have no real investment as they claimed in the country? I should have kept that letter, it will probably be burnt in Africa by now.
Over and above the fact that no Jatropha was being grown, I used some of the existing growers to get yields and work out the processing costs. Jatropha would only be a viable bioenergy if it received huge subsidies. It demanded high labour input especially for harvesting and dehusking, intensive production would bring about severe disease challenges, it was no good for livestock and logistical costs would be huge if grown by smallholders in remote areas as being promoted. It was an economic non-starter. When D1 failed to raise further funding the main promoter and CEO blamed the stock exchange and his financial sponsors for letting him down, claiming it cost 250,000 jobs in Africa. Ooh yeah.
I was even sent to India, a trip sponsored by OVAL Biofuels, an Australian Biofuel company, where it was claimed the trains ran on Jatropha. On that trip, as well as the representative, I had three Ministry Officials with me. We travelled some 3,000 kilometres by car, finding less than 20 hectares of Jatropha, not one train running on biodiesel. Our luggage went missing on the way to India, so on arrival, we were all offered some compensation from the airline to buy some clothes. The amount on offer was deemed too little by the Ministry people, two men and a lady, the latter the most sensible. They refused to leave Mumbai until the OVAL member, Claude, bought them a suitcase full of clothes. They hated the food on the trip, lentils and naan bread mostly. On returning to Mumbai from the road trip at midnight they insisted on finding chicken. After over an hour of searching, we found a KFC. I have never seen so much chicken eaten by so few in one sitting. The next day we had to fly to Delhi to visit Tata and BP, this time the Ministry guys refused to board unless they were paid a bigger allowance. At the check-in, one even tore up his ticket. I told Claude just to leave him, but Claude agreed to the increased allowance. We asked them at the check-in desk to print a new ticket, they refused saying they could only issue a new one. More money. Needless to say, the Jatropha story in India was as authentic as the one in Zambia. From being a bearer of false information, I had become the go-to person for biofuels. I was even made the Vice Chairman of the Zambia Biofuel Association. My chairman was Professor Paul Sinkala, a really nice gentleman. He became very disheartened with the demise of Jatropha, but still strongly believes in green energy.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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