L7 Plantation Recap

Lesson 7 Reflection Recap

In the lesson we provided some benefits of plantations and in the reflection we asked you to find what some of the problems with plantations. Bottom line is that there are both pros and cons to plantations. We did not want you leaving this topic with thinking only good or only bad about them so we are recapping.

But first let’s look at bias. This is a critical topic for this class and EVERYTHING in life: Marketing, politics, medical research, buying a car, choosing a good restaurant, etc.. People often tell partial truths or incomplete stories to make their point. Beware! Here are some tips:

• Find a Reliable Source: Is it a blog or a published paper in a journal? A government source or an article in Reddit? I am not saying blogs and Reddit are bad but a good starting point is looking for credible authorship.
• Are both sides acknowledged: Look for an article that acknowledges both sides. No topic is all good or all bad. Credibility comes with acknowledging the other point of view.
• Sometimes just the title gives it away: “Why Tree Plantations are the Problem, Not the Solution.” likely has bias.

Every article has bias. We just need you to be aware of it when you are reading.

Here are two of your peers insights on bias:

I do not think this source is biased. I think this due to the fact that she concluded with a paragraph about her awareness to both sides of the argument. She says that her first choice would be to not have native forests converted to plantation forests but she still understands that plantations have a lot to offer and all we have to do is find the balance.

I think this article is biased because no advantages of tree plantations were mentioned, no sources were referenced even though there were several statistics stated, and the article appeared to be geared towards a specific group. This article did not contain much helpful information, but rather opinions the author held and tried to influence on the readers.

Now, on to Plantations

Plantations are neither all bad, or all good. As we learned in the lesson plantations are very productive with 3% of global forests in plantations but making up 27% of the global wood harvest. Plantations are approximately 10 times more productive than natural forests. (Sources for this were in lesson 7.) Additional benefits include:

• Economics and jobs for local communities
• Prevent wind and water erosion
• Capture carbon to reduce climate change impacts
• Large yield from plantations may allow us to have less wood from natural forests.

The two big negatives to plantations seem to be:

• Monoculture (one type of plant, no diversity like in a natural forest)
• Requires inputs pesticide, fertilizer irrigation that can get into the water or air.

Here are some of our conclusions.

• Plantations are NOT natural forests. Their purpose is to grow a product – like a farmer would have an apple orchard or a field of corn or soybeans. Plantations don’t have to have diversity. If you are looking for plant diversity – find a natural forest. Is it possible that the enhance productivity of a plantation is saving natural forests?
• Pesticides and fertilizer applications can be done responsibly. Regulations and oversight are important.
• Sometimes plantations are better than the alternative – houses, copper mining, coal mining, agricultural crops? You need to ask the question – “Plantations are better or worse than what?” Private landowners are responsible for most of the land in the US. They need to make money on this land. What you have them do?
• Don’t confuse plantations in the United States with plantations in other countries. Every country is different. Cutting down tropical forest for a wood plantation is probably a bad idea. Regulations, economics, land ownership, etc. is different (and complicated) for each country. However, Done correctly anywhere, plantations can be a good form of economic development and possibly reforestation.
• If there was a trend to replace all natural forests with plantations –that would be a problem. Again we need natural forests and we need plantations.
• After a natural disaster – like a forest fire – a plantation may be the fastest way to get plants back on the landscape – reducing erosion.
• Using less wood products is not the answer. As we will see in a later lesson, using wood products will result in more forestland, not less.

One of your peers submitted this reflection on an article by Rietbergen-McCracken  et al. that captures many of the pros and cons.

The magazine’s September issue largely focused on forest plantations and their controversial impact on biomass production industries. As the lesson pointed out, forest plantations produce about ten times the amount of wood that natural forests are able to provide, despite the silvicultural practices employed on forestry. Not only do they provide a drastically larger amount of wood, but plantations do so on significantly less land than natural forests with a healthy capacity to sustain logging occupy. Despite only taking up 2.8% of total forested land, plantations generated 27% of globally harvest wood. Aside from the massive disparity in production, supporters of plantations also claim that they reduce the logging of natural forests, thus preserving biodiversity and the ecosystems that are so important to the globe. Therefore, it is in humanity’s best interest, supporters argue, that plantations are increasingly implemented because they answer the rising consumption of wood and fiber better than natural forest logging does while simultaneously minimizing the impact human harvesting can induce on the Earth.

However, the benefits that plantations offer in comparison to natural forests can not be dissociated from their downfalls. Anti-plantation activists negate the idea that plantations lessen environmental impact by bringing different issues to the table. Recent research implicates soil devastation, water cycle disruption, and pathogen disbursement are all consequences of plantation use. The expediated time-table in which plantations are farmed reduces the nutrition of the soil in the area due to the intense biomass removal during the harvesting process. The moisture of the soil is also exhausted throughout this process. The loss of water can be attributed to the change in the natural flow of water specific to the land that the plantation is taking up as well. In addition to the depletion of the environmental revitilants, disease and debilitating pests are easily introduced to the land when a plantation is initiated. Many are able to argue that all of these effects, along with the lack of diversity in plantation growth, combine to leave a severely negative impact on the biodiversity of the planet.

My impression of the article was that it served as a very informative editorial. The authors addressed both sides of the debate and provided scientific data to defend both standpoints. If I had to guess where the sympathies of the authors lie, I would lean towards anti-plantation, however I think that they kept a healthy distance away from allowing any bias to soak up their writing and cloud the information.  KS

Rietbergen-McCracken, Jennifer and White, Andy. arborvitae: The IUCN/WWF Forest Conservation Newsletter. September, 2006. http://www.fao.org/forestry/42646-0b7bb60246797272cd60dad25df4645c7.pdf