Helsinki – Planting trees should be a family-based agricultural activity rather than a national reforestation program of the Philippines’ Greening Program to succeed.
This is the recommendation of two Finnish forestry experts who showed us the family-owned and managed forest farms in Hamlinlina area, north of Helsinki over the weekend.
Klaus Virtanen, a forestry expert who stayed three years in the Philippines and whose family owns about 200 hectares of forests, said the family-based forestry program of Finland establishes a sense of ownership which is important in protecting the trees.
Each forest farming family in Finland.has at least 30-hectares of forests which he could harvest when the trees mature after 60 to 80 years.
“The trees we are harvesting now were planted by our grandparents or parents and the trees we are planting after the.harvest now belongs to our grandchildren,” said Virtanen.
With about 80% of Finland’s land area if 35-million hectares covered by forests of which 60% is owned by farming families, tree farming contributes 20% to the Gross Domestic Product of a country with only 5.5-million people.
I believe the Philippines should learn from the Finnish model.
Last year, as a Convergence Project of the Dept of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Dept of Environment and Natural.Resources, I presented to then Secretary Regina Lopez my own concept of tree farming which I called “Bantay Kagubatan” program.
Unlike the Finnish model, the Bantay Kagubatan is a stewardship program where poor rural families are assigned to guard an area of 5-hectares per family.
The program will engage them in planting at least 500 tree seedlings of both harvestable and indigenous tree species.
For every growing seedling, the family gets an incentive of P2 or a total of P5,000 a month if he attains a perfect survival rate.
In addition, the family will be given livelihood projects like native pig raising and free range chicken raising.
The family will also be taught to plant second crops like black pepper, coffee, cacao, abaca or yam and taught other farming activities like mushroom culture.
After 8 to 10 years, the commercial tree species estimated to be about 200 per hectare could be harvested and sold to a facility which will be established as part of the program.
The expenses incurred in the program will be deducted and the remaining amount will go the farming family assigned to the area and part of it to the management group which will handle the program.
The indigenous tree species will not be touched and left to grow while the farmer plants again for another cycle.
If a harvested tree could fetch P2,000 each, the gross income of each farming family would be P2-million for the 1,000 trees.
On the other hand, if the targeted 2-million hectares watershed areas are planted to indigenous tree species that means 400-million trees growing in the watershed areas or critical forest areas.
That would also mean 400,000 farming families in the countryside lifted out of poverty.
At a gross income of P400,000 per hectare, the program could generate a gross revenue of P800-B on the 10th year.
The Bantay Kagubatan proposal as a convergence project of DAF and DENR was sidelined in the face of the controversies during Sec. Lopez short stint as DENR secretary.
But this will be presented again to the new DENR secretary Roy Cimatu.
I am more determined to push the Bantay Kagubatan Program because a similar concept of agro-forestry has been proven to work in Finland.
(Video of Klaus Virtanen in Finland forest taken by Ferdinand Piñol.)
https://fb.watch/aL74DwYyA0/
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