/biz/ - Business and Finance

Umm you're a dumbass op.

No matter how fast you grow a tree it ain't gonna be worth shit to cut boards out of at 8 years. from the wikipedia page: Paulownia grown on plantations generally has widely spaced growth rings, meaning that it is soft and of little value;

not to mention that because the only use you'll have of it (and its susceptable to fungus, etc) at the 8 year size is pulp, you would be better off with more or less any (already fast growing) pulp tree, which if you don't already have growing, ain't worth you're time persueing.

You got 20 hec that will grow grass it sounds like. 20 hec could be used for a lot of things (quite frankly bamboo sounds more realistic then this shitty chink wood).

>>1778

>I couldn't find no information in my language and very little in english, so I suppose it's not really viable option for me, I'm not gonna plant a trees from which I would harvest teaspoon of syrup which is impossible to sell directly to people in my country.

I don't think it's a very obscure tree. Generally, it seems the extraction process looks very straightforward. It seems in Eastern Europe, there's a similar thing going on.

>>1782

ok, it seems like I wasn't googling enough. I found interesting forum for people interested in tapping maples - http://mapletrader.com/

I found also some guy from my country which is doing that for about 6 years. For central europe, most suitable maples seems to be Acer platanoides, Acer pseudoplatanus and Acer campestre. Based on what he said, it's extremely rare craft in europe, all information you can get is from US/Canadian sources, technology must be imported from Canada and based on what he was able to find out, there are only 2 people in europe making maple syrup - him and one guy in Czech republic, both mostly for personal use.

For tapping you need to have tree about 40 years old (but some american universities claim that you can start since tree is 20 years old), and you should be able to get about 10 gallons or 37.8 L of sap from one tap. Some trees can have multiple taps, don't ask me for details, visit forum I posted. If we manage to get sap with 2% amount of sugar (what is quite good for europe) we should be able to convert about 40L of sap into 1L of syrup. You can correct me, this information might be false.

Also be careful, tapping wild trees is in some (european?) states illegal.

So if you want to start growing maples for syrup, I'd recommend to check if your state offers some subsidies for forestation. IMHO it'd be fun to plant a few of them when I'll get married and move into a house so I'll have something fun to do when I retire. But honey>>>syrup.

While I'm here, a lot of people out there could use a place to bury some bodies I'm sure. Maybe try leasing the land to someone who wants to build something there, or someone who likes to camp and needs a place to live. Fuck, do not underestimate the value of land, OP.

>Also worth mentioning: if the earth your land encompasses isn't fertile, you won't be growing shit.

Try finding someone who wants to invest in solar or wind power.

Advertising and mining? Garbage dump? Athletic/doggie/recreational park? Concerts and festivals?

It's not easy to destroy land without the use of chemicals and chemical compounds. It's something that keeps on giving. You could lease that shit and go traveling the world while people keep paying you for the use of the land and you don't even have to be there. Don't tell the rich executive type bigheads and the faggy hipster numale business types about this. Hush hush.

Hope this helps. I didn't mean to derail the thread into maple syrup by the way.

>>1732

Arboriculturist here. Think I can help and give you some advice and confidence OP. Your plan is similar to mine, once I've obtained some land.

>Solid boards sells at about 250€/m^3, but I'm no farmer, I have no contacts, let's use 100€/m^3 as best case scenario, and 20€/m^3 (firewood) as worst case scenario

Firstly don't forget you'd have 8 years to make contacts while they grow. I don't know if those figures are for generic "timber" or this specific wood, but I think you could expect to sell it for near or full market value, especially if you export it to Japan.

>500 trees cost about 3750€

>I do not own tractor, so planting more than 1 ha is impossible.

Grow them from seed. Plant 2-3 seeds per tree you want and thin them out once they've germinated. Seed-grown trees are much more adapted to their environment than imported standards, therefore they grow faster (often overtaking immigrant trees within 5 years) and are less susceptible to local bad weather, diseases and pests (expect to lose 2-5% of your crop to these). Seeds are also about 1000x cheaper to do and you could plant all 20 hectares yourself by hand over a few weeks. The standard trees you would otherwise buy are probably no more than 1-2 years old at most, these things grow at 7 feet per year.

>calculation price of tech and fuel

I don't think you would need any tech or fuel before actually cropping them, aside from deer fencing. Your young trees will be a magnet for rabbits and deer, you need to fence them out and shoot the ones that will inevitably get through. DO NOT use chemical fertilisers or fungicide/pesticides. You will kill your mycorrhizzal fungi network and soil food web.

On that note, other advice I can give you:

>Mix planting, cultivate healthy soil food web

I would make maybe 30% of the tree crop mixed fruit trees/berry bushes spread evenly throughout the land, and also including a shelter belt of oaks, ash, hawthorn and beech on the north/eastern side will be worth it to increase your biodiversity significantly and filter cold winds. Your biggest problem will be Pawlounia-liking predatory fungus and pests, but having a few different species in the mix will help reduce their chances of dominance. Pawlounia are N-fixing, so you will have insanely huge fruit crops which you could just use yourself or collect and sell to cider brewers/local farm shops.

>Invest in the soil fertility

I can't stress this enough, do not use chemicals. They kill mycorrhizal fungi and soil bacteria. Mycorrhizal fungi are worth researching if you haven't heard of them (I recommend "Teaming with Microbes", Lowenfels and Lewis), but basically they are symbiotic fungi that increase the effective rooting area of a tree by 900-1000x (pic related). You can buy spores and sprinkle them in seed planting holes throughout the plantation; in a short time after germination they will link and "infect" every tree, making the entire area one symbiotic web and stopping the predatory ones from getting a foothold. Soil bacteria are the actual agents of nutrient uptake by roots. It's probably the biggest mistake farmers make nowadays; the more chemicals you put on your land, the more you kill it, the more chemicals you need to artificially sustain the life that you want to grow. It's a vicious and expensive cycle. Artificial fertilizer is abhorrently inefficient; more than 90% of it misses the rootzone entirely and leaches straight down to the water table. I would invest in some mushroom compost to begin with just to kickstart your soil food web and get some earthworms working away in there. After that you might not need to even fertilize again (fungi can transport trees nutrients from within a radius of 40 miles) but if you do, do it with organic compost like manure or mushroom.

Good luck, let me know how it goes, if you do it/don't do it and why. I will be doing pretty much this when I have my own land.