The Agroforester

Growing Your Own Mini Sustainable Forest Using Biodiversity and Agroforestry – The Tree

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The author is speaking from experience and not from the classroom.  There are certainly better ways, especially theoretically, but this system is working within the Third World framework of the Philippines.    

Which Tree?

The Broad Leaf Mahogany is also called the True Mahogany.  It is classified as the American genus Swietenia and belongs to the family Meliaceae.  It is an endangered species in its place of origin of Central America, however it is not endangered in the Philippines.  The tree was introduced by the Spaniards hundreds of years ago and then in 1917 the Americans began an expansion of its propagation and today it is one of the most prevalent species found in the Philippines.  The Department of Environment and Natural Resources recommends its use as its reforestation tree of choice.

Pioneer Tree

True Mahogany is a “pioneer” tree.  It grows where less rugged trees cannot yet adapt to the harsh conditions of barren land that has poor soil.  The Philippines only has 2.7% of its original forest with most of the deforestation having taken place 50+ years ago.  Conservatively, at least one third of the deforested lands remain barren.

Soil degradation results when the ultraviolet rays of the sun constantly beat down upon it and during the seasonal changes between wet and dry the soil erodes, cracks and looses its beneficial microbes.  The remaining soil becomes all but useless.  A pioneer tree, such as the True Mahogany will grow in such soil. 

Why Plant Mahogany, won’t Others Do as Well?

The first forest that we grow is for the primary purpose of soil rehabilitation.  The Mahogany is planted high density, about one meter apart.  They grow quickly and the competition between them for sunlight makes them reach upward.  The leafy portion of the tree is dense and condensed resembling more of a ball of leaves at the top of the trunk rather than a spreading and sprawling tree.  By planting them close together the leaves of each reach the neighboring tree and a canopy is formed within three years.  Although it is only ten feet above the ground it is nevertheless a canopy.

Moisture barriers form underneath the canopy and near the ground.  This is caused by the hot sunlight above contrasting with the cooler air within the shadows below.  The temperature differential is 20°F causing moisture to form along the forest floor only after three years.  This new environment is conducive to the return of the beneficial microbes attracting the insects and they in turn attract the birds which fertilize as they move about.  The older leaves fall from the trees to the floor and begin to decompose and that is food for the earthworms, which return as well.  This cycle takes about seven years to complete. 

Why Not Commercial Fertilizers, etc., Why wait 7 Years?

Traditional methods that are ordinary and customary have been employed in every major development bank project to rehabilitate similar barren lands and each has failed.  Each with feasibility studies volumes thick to support the hundreds of millions of dollars spent.

How Long? How Large?

It took mankind thousands of years to kill the forests and now that we have a method that works and only takes seven years why should we question that?  (This tree is only 12 years old, but well nurtured.)  The Italians grow vineyards for their children and the Greeks grow olives for their grandchildren. 

Why shouldn’t the Filipinos take a generation to build back their forests?  After all that would be faster than any other country, most of which think that a project of a hundred thousand hectares is large. More than 27 million hectares of land used to be forested in the Philippines.  What would a few hundred thousand hectares mean overall?  Not much, less than 1% and using traditional methods, even well funded, such a project is doomed to failure. 

On the other hand, each farmer family with one hectare of barren land can learn how to grow a mini-forest.  It is not grown to replace the famer’s existing cash crops, so why be concerned about earning from the forest during the first seven years?  No need, the land would remain barren otherwise and no income would be produced otherwise.  Why create an issue that does not need to be created?  There are more than two million of these opportunities in the Philippines, now we are talking about reforesting more than 6% or around 2 million hectares and doing it in a way that works.

 Contributors receive regular progress reports and are invited to visit the site.

 

 

Growing Your Own Mini Sustainable Forest Using Biodiversity and Agroforestry – The Sapling

4th in a Series

The Sapling

The three-year-old Mahogany is amazingly re-sealant.  As a sapling it has strength and size.  When confronted with drought it dies from the top first, giving in downward, until the first rain and then it begins growing again from the lowest portion that succumbed to the drought. 

Mortality now drops to less than 1%.  However, when it was in its seedling stage it required the caretaker to water it two to three times weekly during the dry season and provide fertilizer once during the beginning of the rainy season, otherwise mortality was around 60%.  As a sapling it is on its own.

With the use of Biochar, organic fertilizer and probiotics, which are being researched at present we may find very promising results.  There is no apparent reason why the saplings should not receive continued feeding and care.  Where we have provided such the trees have grown extremely well.  The illustrated forest is only 2.5 years old.

 The Mahogany trees illustrated in this photo, taken from the author's balcony, receive watering daily during the dry season and are also fertilized.  They are only 2.5 years old too but in comparison the growth rate is nearly double. 

The ones below, also at the author's residence, are 3.5 years old.  A tremendous difference when watered and cared for routinely.

    

The sapling becomes a tree rather fast and the tree seems to grow even faster.

The parents of this 21-year old college student planted this Mahogany 15 years before when Mhey was only 6 years old. Her parents planted thousands of them.  Mhey and her children should never suffer like her parents did because they planted trees with a vision.

Growing Your Own Mini Sustainable Forest Using Biodiversity and Agroforestry – Cash Flow

Everything about the forest should be viewed as potential cash flow.  My friends the flowing of cash is more important in business than the bottom line.  As long as you have a product and a market you have cash each time that you sell into the market.  Most of the imports into the Philippines are a result of the local manufacturers not being able to obtain the same raw materials with consistent quality from local producers.  The reason for this is merely attitude.

A change in attitude from windfall thinking to cash flow thinking is not so difficult.  However, to illustrate this point: How many Filipino friends do you have who own a piece of property that pays them 12 months rent in advance?  That is a windfall, they get that lump of money all in one shot and then what do they do with the money?  They travel and play for a month until it runs out.  The renter then calls and says that the water pump has broken.  Oops no money for that so the house deteriorates and deteriorates.  That is the cycle of windfall thinking, whether it is in real estate, farming or forestry. 

In agroforestry you build a diversified forest that has something of value produced every day of the year and it is sustainable from one year to the next without having to harvest all and replant.

You start with a piece of barren and non-productive land that you have had for the past 20+ years.  Just a hectare.  It is not an earner, has not been nor do you expect it to be in the future.  Let’s plant it in Mahogany, the beginning stage of an agroforest.  In seven years you have a mini-forest that has rehabilitated the soil and held the property together.  Over the next seven years we slowly convert at the rate that slides downward as the trees get older, maintaining sustainability.

Remember, rehabilitating the soil on unproductive and barren land was the initial goal.  That is now achieved and it is time to use that soil, productively and sustainably so that we produce an indefinite cash flow.

Each Mahogany that we thin, no matter how small, has value.  We must add value to what we cut before selling it.  Even prior to the first thinning we have been trimming the trees for the first seven years.  During that time we have learned how to make products for the market that have never been sold into it before. 

Recently we trimmed merely 246 trees on 450 meters square.  The small branches and usable twigs totaled close to 6 board feet.  Sure you won’t build a house, but how many small parts for the multi-billion dollar hobbyist industry will you make.  Such products are rare nowadays.  At US$ a board foot equivalent what other products can you think of that you could start your cash flow?  Oh, BTW, those twigs and branches that you trimmed are growing back while you work and there are another 9,550 square meters or 9,754 trees that need trimming, not to mention the ones that we are going to actually harvest to make room for planting producers.

Along the way we also plant fast growing "producers" that create a cash flow within the first three years.

Double click on the donation button, contribute the minimum and we will then communicate directly. Learn how we can manage your property that will then create sustainable income for your children and a legacy for yourself that your grandchildren will know who dramatically changed the financial security in their lives, indefinitely.

Growing Your Own Mini Sustainable Forest Using Biodiversity and Agroforestry – The Nursery

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The Nursery

Mahogany seeds come from seed pods, generally there are around 64 seeds per pod and more than 30 pods per tree or nearly 2,000 seeds per newly matured tree.  Large mature trees produce many more.  Most villages or barangays have newly matured trees that are usually 15+/- years old.

The seeds are planted one to two inches apart in loose, but rich bedding soil.

The illustrated nursery rows are 10 meters long and one meter wide.  There are approximately 250 seedlings in plastic bags in each square meter and there are four rows representing 10,000+/- seedlings produced from fewer than five newly matured trees. 
This quantity can complete a one hectare project.

Provide little shade and water for one year and they are ready to plant away from the protection of the nursery.  If you plant too soon the mortality rate will exceed 80%.  Even when planted properly you will have a mortality rate of nearly 40% during the first three years.  Each time a tree dies (dry season) it must  be replaced the following planting season (wet season).   Amazingly, the replacement’s growth will catch up to its older siblings and complete the canopy. 

After 3 years the mortality rate of the saplings drops to less than 1%. 

Contributors receive regular progress reports and are invited to visit the site.

Growing Your Own Mini Sustainable Forest Using Biodiversity and Agroforestry – The Planting

3 in a Series

Planting

Cleaning of the land is mainly to remove growth that will interfere with the new seedling.  Vines are not friendly and should be removed.  

If you plant too soon the mortality rate will exceed 80%.    

Even when planted properly you will have a mortality rate of nearly 40% during the first three years. 

Each mortality, mostly from lack of water and even from thirsty rats that destroy the tiny trunk to chew the remaining moisture from within,
must be replaced the following planting season (wet season).  Amazingly, the replacement’s growth will catch up to its older siblings and complete the canopy. 

After 3 years the mortality rate of the saplings drops to less than 1%.  They will then be healthy trees standing on their own, but these seedlings illustrated above were planted too young and nearly all did not make it.

 Contributors receive regular reports and are invited to visit the site.

Growing Your Own Mini Sustainable Forest Using Biodiversity and Agroforestry – The Sapling

4 in a Series

The three-year-old Mahogany is amazingly resealant.  As a sapling it has strength and size.  When confronted with drought it dies from the top first, giving in downward until the first rain and then it begins growing again from the lowest portion that succumbed to the drought.  Mortality now drops to less than 1%.  In its seedling stage it required the caretaker to water it two to three times weekly during the dry season and provide fertilizer once during the beginning of the rainy season.  As a sapling it is on its own.

However, the use of Biochar, organic fertilizer and probiotics is being researched at present and the results may be very promising.  There is no apparent reason why the saplings should not receive continued feeding and care.  Where we have provided such the trees have grown extremely well.  The illustrated forest is only 2.5 years old.

The Mahogany trees illustrated in this photo taken from the second floor balcony are in the front yard of the author’s residence.  They received watering daily during the dry season and were also fertilized.  They are only 2.5 years old too but in comparison the growth rate is nearly double.  The ones (dark green) on the left are 3.5 years old. 
  A tremendous difference when watered and cared for routinely.

Contributors receive regular progress reports and are invited to visit.

Will Biochar and Charcoal Briquetting help the farmer, reverse climate change?

Forest biochar is created using low oxygen and if efficient the gas emissions are burned in the process, thus creating an environmentally favorable process.  This process produces mostly activated carbon, a gram of which has more surface area than a football field, so the spreading of 2 kg per square meter onto the forest floor greatly enhances the char's absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere.  In turn the feeding of it to the tree through its root system, obviously at ground level.  The reciprocation from the tree increases the output of oxygen into the atmosphere.  YES THIS HELPS THE FARMER (AGOFORESTER) AND HELPS IN THE PROCESS TO REVERSE CLIMATE CHANGE.

The same process, when taken two steps further, produces charcoal briquettes.   What makes a briquette better than a regular piece of charcoal? 

In 2005 the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, Philippines conducted a Heating Value study of different charcoal made from cut trees and found that of 15 species of the most popular woods/fuelwood (firewood) the highest  BTU/lb heating value produced measured 9,378.  However, of the 57 combinations of abandoned biomass used to make charcoal briquettes  24 combinations produced higher heating values, with 16 ranging between 10,000 to 12,273.73 BTU/lb.  Cocoshell being the highest. wood fines and corn cob fines produced 11,041 BTU/lb.  Ipil-ipil twigs (50%) and rice hull (50%) produced the lowest at 6,401.79 BTU/lb. 

All-in-all the making of charcoal briquettes from abandoned biomass provides 60% more material combinations that produce higher heating values than regular charcoal and does not require the cutting of trees.  Furthermore, the use of briquettes produces uniform heat, predictable heating values and when use properly is a far more efficient heating source than regular charcoal.  YES THIS HELPS WITH THE PROCESS OF REVERSING CLIMATE CHANGE and HELPS COOKING MORE EFFICIENTLY.