<i>"The company has deals to plant 250,000 acres of jatropha in Brazil, India and other countries expected to eventually produce about 70 million gallons of fuel a year."</i><p>This does not sound promising. Scaled linearly to the current level of oil production, this would cover more land area than Brazil and India put together.<p>(Current production is 90 million oil barrels/day [0] or 1.4 trillion gallons/year. If this biofuel yields 70 million gallons/year out of 250,000 acres, that's 280 gallons/year / acre; dividing out that's about 5 billion acres, or 18 million km^2. Brazil and India put together are 12 million km^2 [1]).<p>Perspective on the 280 gallons/acre figure [2]:<p><i>"Estimates of Jatropha seed yield vary widely, due to a lack of research data, the genetic diversity of the crop, the range of environments in which it is grown, and Jatropha's perennial life cycle. Seed yields under cultivation can range from 1,500 to 2,000 kilograms per hectare, corresponding to extractable oil yields of 540 to 680 litres per hectare (58 to 73 US gallons per acre).[17] Time magazine recently cited the potential for as much as 1,600 gallons of diesel fuel per acre per year.[18] The plant may yield more than four times as much fuel per hectare as soybean, and more than ten times that of maize (corn)."</i><p>Also: [3]<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_curcas#Biofuel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_curcas#Biofuel</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Yield" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Yield</a>