The Green Advantage

Invest in your future, then invest in your world.^TM

HOW THE TREES ARE GROWING

TEAK

The teak on our plantation continues to do extremely well. Since Costa Rica has many microclimates, the question was whether the dry season in our location was long enough for teak, so before we planted or sold any, we had our forestry engineer check our month-by-month rainfall. He gave us the green light to grow teak, and now that we've passed the dry season, we are seeing firsthand that the climate is excellent for it.  Also, some 9-year-old teak has been harvested from a farm near ours, and the density was good. While on our April  trip to Costa Rica, we made an excursion to Sarchi, an area known for its furniture manufacturing. We found that there are some very skilled craftsmen there. The furniture in these photos is stained young teak, and the floor under the beds is natural teak.

SPANISH CEDAR

Spanish cedar has not fared as well, but its strong scent has drawn the pests away from the mahogany, which is therefore doing great. The photo shows how the shoot-borer damages the tops of the  trees, making them not grow as straight. This will produce an interesting grain pattern, but the wood will not be as easy to market for furniture and paneling, making it less valuable. We suspect, however, that it will still make beautiful musical instruments and can be put to other artistic uses. Since the Spanish cedar is working so well as a "sacrifice tree" to protect the more valuable mahogany, we are planning on continuing to use it this way. For those  who own Spanish cedar with us in their mixed plantings, we have given them additional trees to offset the reduced value of their cedar.

MAHOGANY

The mahogany is looking beautiful, with no shoot-borer damage. When it comes to this very desirable wood, there is the old bad news/good news scenario. The bad news is that it is becoming scarcer and scarcer and is still being harvested illegally from virgin rain forest. The good news is you can imagine what that is doing to the price.  When we started the plantation, the valuation of mahogany logs was about half that of teak logs. Now mahogany has caught up, if you can even get the wood.

A store owner in Costa Rica was telling us that people frequently ask them if they can get their hands on some guayabón (sometimes called guayabo), a wood prized there for its strength and suitability for beams in new construction but that is growing more and more scarce. We said that we would definitely look into its viability as a plantation species that we could grow.Later, that same store owner joined us for a tour of our plantation. Our manager, Hector, who grew up in the area, was driving us around.Looking out over a field of 950 thriving nine-month-old trees, the store owner asked, “What kind of trees are those?” “Surá,” we replied. Whereupon Hector tossed over his shoulder, “Around here, we call it guayabón.”To own Terminalia oblonga by any other name is just as sweet!

-----------------------------------------

ARTICLES

Jack Ewing, author of an engaging, straight-shooting book on Costa Rican ecosystems, Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate, has contributed an article to our website called "Forest Regeneration." In the article, he emphasizes the importance of never downgrading what’s already there: “Whatever you do, don’t cut down a natural forest so you can use the land to plant trees. This is tantamount to replacing a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt with a cheap print that you can buy for a few dollars at the corner bookstore." The history of his Hacienda Barú Wildlife Preserve  proves that when you just keep trying to take things to one level better, sometimes it can lead you to an unexpected place.

One of the things that people often ask us is, “Why did you focus on tropical hardwoods as an investment?” They think it is a great idea, but want to know what made us come up with it. Well, the answer is that we were trying to go one level better. Our story will be told in an article on www.ecoworld.com, to appear on their site in mid-June.