
It was an interesting story, buried in the news this week. A crackerjack government team has orders to develop a computer model that shows climate legislation supported by the President's idea of planting more trees....would be 'more value' than growing food.
The Ag Secretary....Tom Vilsack ordered the study.
Naturally this is all supposed to benefit the profit margin of farmers....which would be the five-star selling point of such a study. But to be honest, the only way to improve the profit maring....is to remove farm land from production and lessen food production from within the US.
How would this all work? Basically...we pay you (it's another stimulus check of sorts....don't worry)....to take a open pasture or field...and convert roughly 60 million acres of American farmland in forests over forty years.
The logic....which is a proven fact...trees clean air. And forests do it better than farms. So heat-trapping gases get cleaned up and we stay pure....sort of.
Naturally, ranchers and farmers are distressed about this deal.
I sat and pondered over this...having grown up in the Bama heartland and know the plain truth about farms and agriculture.
There are a number of programs in existence...which the Agriculture department likely knows much about...where guys are already getting a tax credit for converting a portion of their farm over to forested areas. Naturally...this is normally a leased deal where you get a lumber company to come through...plant in bulk over a day in some field...and ten years later...you've got 50,000 pine trees ready to harvest. You pick pines because they grow fast and mature quicker.
In this case, since it'd be a cash stimulus type deal...there's no forcing of folks to turn over land or mandatory conversion to forests. They want to entice you with some deal to last forty years. I would have an assumption that this means a low check of sorts in exchange for a minimum of property...maybe twenty acres. The check arrives once a year...for forty years. I'm sure there would be a minimum number of trees required...and I'd bet that they settle on pines more than any other tree.
The truth of the matter...if you drove over the entire state of Bama...and looked for non-crop lands which had potential....five percent of the entire state might have the possibility of fitting into the scheme.
Lets say you had a forty acre lot for cattle grazing...but you drew a straight line over the middle (vertical and horizontal)....and set a one-hundred foot wide line for tree-planting purposes. You'd probably give up roughly ten acres. Toss in a second grazing pasture with the same trick...and you'd likely pass their test and really not lose much.
The neat thing about this entire offer...you'd do it for forty years...and then harvest the heck out of 'forest'. It'd be your son or daughter with the profit...but basically....you'd invest for the future.
The other great thing about this deal...is that we'd have to employ 1,000 forestry-degreed punks out of Auburn....to watch over and manage such a program. They'd all need Ford F-150 pick-ups to tour their sector....so the Ford guys would make a profit off the deal. And naturally...the Auburn forestry punks would have to meet in New Orleans each year on a government-funded trip to discuss the forestry future...and toss down shots of Tequila.
This would help to save the earth, provide a massive forest for shade, give the lumber industry a huge boost in forty years, help those poor Auburn forestry students get a real job, and the Tequila industry would be blessed from this yearly meeting of the forestry dudes.
The real bottom line? You'd get a check for probably $1,000 a year....just let trees sit on the property. Heck, that's a trip for you and the old lady over to Atlanta each year and watch the Braves play an entire weekend....with as much beer as you can drink.