Eucalyptus Trees

[Michel1]

My gf wants to purchase a 6 rai piece of land in Nong Bu Lam Pu. The land is not good for rice and her mother says to plant euclyptus trees and you can sell in three years for paper. Is this true and is there a better use for the land? Cost is between 100,000 and 200,000 bhat.

[udon]

I only know that euclyptus trees will ruin the soil and it will take many years to recover if you change your mind after a few years and want to grow something else.

Have you had the soil tested?

[Khutan]

As an Australian, if you have ever had the shock of seeing large amounts of eucalyptus catch fire, you would never go near the stuff.

[suegha]

Eucalyptus is an extremely fast growing tree. I didn't know it could be used to make paper, can anyone verify this?

[Gary A]

Eucalyptus is an extremely fast growing tree. I didn't know it could be used to make paper, can anyone verify this?

I asked my wife about these trees and she was horrified that I would even talk about planting them. I was surfing to find out why she thinks these trees are so hard on the land;

In 1982, the Soon Hua Seng Group (SHS), one of Thailand's leading rice and cassava exporters, started planting eucalyptus in east Thailand as an alternative to cassava. By 1987 SHS was planting eucalyptus on a commercial scale and set up the company Advance Agro to produce pulp and paper.

Today the SGS Group has 32,000 hectares of its own plantations as well as around 50,000 hectares of eucalyptus planted by farmers under contract. In 1996, Advance Agro opened its first pulp and paper mill in Prachinburi province and now has a total capacity of 500,000 tonnes of paper a year. Seventy per cent of Advance Agro's paper is exported, important markets being China, USA, Hong Kong and Japan.

Laemkowchan village is about 100 years old and is close to one of Advance Agro's mills. In the past, villagers grew rice, cassava and pumpkin. When SHS started to look for land to plant eucalyptus many villagers sold the land they had used for cassava planting to the company.

But villagers found that the eucalyptus plantations started to affect their rice fields as well. Suwan Kaewchan, a member of the Administration Council in Laemkowchan village, explained to researcher Noel Rajesh: "When the company came and started planting eucalyptus near the rice fields, the water began to dry up and people found they couldn't grow rice. One by one they began to sell their land and leave. They went to work as hired labour in other areas or with the company."

Villagers who kept their land but planted eucalyptus under contract faced another problem, as Kasem Petchanee pointed out: "After the first harvest, the soil is so degraded that villagers have to spend money to improve the soil. Removing the trees is difficult. Villagers have to hire expensive machinery to remove the stumps and roots of the trees. Agricultural communities are falling into debt to banks and money lenders. When villagers cannot pay, the banks take their land."

Waste water from Advance Agro's mill is poured onto the eucalyptus plantations. The filthy water lies in channels between the rows of the eucalyptus trees. Villagers point out that although the water is treated at the pulp mill this does not mean that the water is clean. Recently water released from the mill killed villagers' rice crops.

Villagers report that ash from factory chimneys is deposited on their houses and gardens. People have experienced skin problems such as itchy skin. The air sometimes smells and villagers are worried that the factory might be emitting sulphur as well.

The company has set up an environmental unit, and company officials tell villagers that they know about the problems. However, villagers have never received any compensation for any of the problems that the company has caused them.

Several international companies have benefited from contracts on Advance Agro's mills. Jaakko Poyry, the world's largest forestry and engineering consulting company, won contracts from Advance Agro for engineering design, project management and construction management of the Prachinburi mill. Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries provided machinery for Advance Agro's paper mill.

Finance for Advance Agro's mills was organised by Barclays de Zoete Wedd. The main backers were Bangkok Bank, Thai Farmers' Bank, Krung Thai Bank and the UK's Commonwealth Development Corporation. The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private lending arm, lent US$10 million and further financing came from export credits.

When Stora Enso bought a 19.9 per cent share in Advance Agro in 1998, it gained exclusive international marketing rights for Advance Agro's products and a secure market for 12,000 tonnes a year of long-fibre pulp from its European mills. Two members of Stora Enso are on the board of Advance Agro.

Advance Agro is a good illustration of how Northern and Thai companies benefit from the pulp and paper industry, while rural communities are left with the costs.

[udon]

On a small amount of land, I'd have a look at fast growing, clumping, timber quality, Bamboo.

Google it in Aus.

[bannork]

Eucalpytus is certainly the in thing in Issan, along with rubber trees. I've read about the deep roots lowering the water table so things can't grow underneath the trees, as well as sucking the nutrients out of the soil, but I have to say from May to December there's plenty of grass growing beneath the ones in our village.

I don't know if the roots can handle flooded land, a factor the OP may need to consider but they can certainly survive dry periods; the 3 year growth period plus the ease with which they can be grown are the main attractions.

However the OP may have to fence the entire 6 rai to prevent cattle grazing underneath, breaking off branches, plus locals liberating the trees themselves as they grow.

[Youbloodybeauty]

Expatriate Gum Trees

Large scale planting of Eucalypts overseas is not always welcomed by the local population. The following extracts illustrate the extent of the problem (from "Science Comes to the Gum Tree", Dr Anne-Maria Brennan, University of Kent, Canterbury, in Waste Disposal and Water Management in Australia, April 1992).

"In some parts of the world eucalypts have been heralded as the saviour of forests, for their rapid growth makes them a naturally renewable resource of timber and wood for fuel, helping to obviate the need for large-scale deforestation. But things are different in other places where the non-native trees are regarded as little more than weeds which threaten to oust the natural vegetation of the area."

........As a result of this, eucalypts have in recent times become the focus of riots and open hostility between farmers, forestry officials and funding bodies. ..........In Spain, a Society which promotes the cause against non-native introduced species has even called itself the Phorocantha Club, after the name of the bark beetle which infects and kills the much-hated eucalyptus!

Those who campaign against eucalyptus do so on the basis that the trees are aggressive non-natives that lower the water table, poison the soil and deplete it of nutrients."

The situation is a little less volatile where eucalypts have been planted mainly for landscaping. In California, for example, the eucalypt is so common that many people believe that it is a Californian native. With the exception of E.globulus, which is listed among the exotic pest plants of greatest concern by the California Exotic Pest Plant Council, eucalypts seem to have been generally accepted in California for their intrinsic qualities but there are understandable concerns about the widespread use of what is, after all, an alien species.

http://farrer.riv.csu.edu.au/ASGAP/eucalypt.html

[udon]

some links re: Bamboo for profit.

http://www.bamboo.org.au/

http://www.bambooworld.com.au/pages/BWOverview.htm

http://www.ctl.com.au/abn/abn.htm

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http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/bamboo.html

Some timber bamboo images: http://www.bamboogarden.com/Timber%20Bamboos.htm

[Michel1]

Thanks for the great information. I am from San Francisco and have always regareded eucalyptus as a problem tree which is difficult to remove and burns easily. I will have my gf read the information provided above. If the land is already not very good for crops why make it worse.