"Couldn't most of the problem be solved by switching to hemp as a paper source?"

Yes. But the war against hemp STARTED when William Randolph Hurst wanted to protect the value of his miles of timber (there is apparently more money in paper than there is in lumber). So he found a negative facet of hemp production that he could sell to the Religious Right and other seriously controlling parties, and had all of hemp outlawed, for any reason.

John D. Rockefeller did the same thing with alcohol. He didn't give a fig about people consuming alcohol. But he started a company called Standard Oil. Henry Ford's automobiles came off the assembly line as dual-fuel vehicles, using gasoline and alcohol. In the city where gasoline was available, the operators used that; when they were traveling out in the country, they would just stop at a farm and buy a few gallons of the farmer's homemade alcohol, make a small adjustment in the car, and tootle off burning alcohol. Rockefeller used the temperance movement (and about $4.5 million) to promote Prohibition just so he could corner the market on fuel.

Overwhelming greed strikes again! And has been used as a role model ever since.

Sue

"But one question - At least at a distance, don't these tree farms look fairly nice?"

Most things look better from a distance.

Sue

"Where do we grow the hemp to replace that much wood? A forest of trees would yield a lot more pulp per square foot than a field of hemp."

Actually, that's not true. Trees aren't exactly an annual crop, you know. They take years to mature enough to make harvesting them pay. Depending on local conditions, an acre of hemp can produce from four to ten times as much paper pulp as an acre of trees that takes twenty or so years to mature.

Hemp also produces a higher-quality type of paper, and the production of it doesn't require all the toxic chemicals that wood pulp needs.

Where to grow it? Let some of the farmers who are growing corn now change to growing hemp and make a decent living for a change. Corn has long been America's #1 crop. It grows on over 80 million acres, producing about 13 billion bushels. But by the time the farmers buy all the fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides this greedy crop requires, he's not making much profit; without the subsidies, he wouldn't be making any. I have never heard of a crop that takes as much fertilizer and chemical protection as corn. We grow a lot of corn here because it provides a guaranteed income for farmers through the subsidies paid for by the taxpayers. We grow so much of it that scientists are paid to find new uses for it. Corn is poor feed for livestock, but it's fed to livestock. High-fructose corn syrup is bad for people's health, but since 1990 or so, it's put in virtually everything we eat. The next excitement was using it for ethanol, although is isn't really good for that, as the cost to produce it just about wipes out any profit from the alcohol. Mesquite beans, cattails and fodder beets are far superior to corn for ethanol, but corn is SUBSIDIZED, which is the attractive difference. Sense is not an issue in subsidized farming.

Hemp, on the other hand, doesn't take many additional nutrients, nor much water. It grows fast and is harvested in 4 months, growing so fast that it outcompetes weeds, so it doesn't need herbicides. All hemp varieties produce their own natural pesticides, so farmers wouldn't have that expense, either. The valuable fibers are in the stems, so the plant residue after basic processing can be returned to the soil, as the unneeded leaves and roots are where the nutrients are concentrated.

Always follow the money, not the political fabrications.

Sue

To get this thread away from the political fabrications and a possible lock from the Sheriff. Back to the OP's thoughts and possible solutions to his dilemma.

How many of you get out on the trail/camp, outdoors etc on a regular basis to recharge the batteries (so to speak ) in order not to let civilized life get you down? I find regular outings allow me to cope through the workaday drudgery much better when I know that a hike is in the plans on the weekend.

You are entirely correct that hings have greatly improved if you use 1900 as the baseline. On the other hand it is instructive to read what people in the 1600s were saying. Settlers in many areas lamented about the great number of huge trees that would have to be removed to site a cabin.

The lumber we harvest today would be considered unsuitable for blocking back in the 40s. Used to be quarter-sawn, clear, heartwood, pine was cheap. Every lumberyard had planks of it two foot wide and twenty feet long. Now you pay extra for quarter-sawn and clear wood will cost you an arm and a leg. A clear quarter-sawn plank two-foot wide might as well be made of unobtainium.

Yes, there are more deer. Largely because the predator species are gone.

One other problem with the wood from your tree farms would be that they are relatively fast growing with wide growth rings, significantly weaker than "wild" trees, with narrower rings.

The changes in wood quality are the reason than lumber from submerged logs, and older buildings is so valuable. I have done research on late nineteenth century schooners, and the quality of wood you see in their hulls is incredible - beams fifty feet long (and longer) with few if any knots, closely spaced rings - absolutely beautiful wood that is just about extinct today.

I'm feeling that too. I see far too many people in their "own little world" while driving around. Dealing with people, including my own relatives, who don't see survival preparation as a priority. It's no wonder why preppers keep it "down low." I can only imagine what is was like during Katrina. Here in the Bay Area, it wouldn't take much to screw things up. The last time I felt that anyone really gave it a thought was during the 1989 earthquake, and we're due for another. Complacency is the norm. I can't wait to retire. When that happens, I'm outta this state and going to a another that still has a grasp on reality. So for the other states that I will be looking at living in, don't judge because of where I came from; believe me, I'm certainly not looking at changing the structure. I hear that all the time from my in-laws from another state. Sorry to sound so down, oh well, tomorrow's another day...

You're absolutely correct. In this area of millions of acres of forest, there is almost no old-growth anywhere, just a few individuals or patches due to topography or mapping errors. I have seen pictures of the area in the early 1900's. Not a live tree standing anywhere, and rivers running with mud. The national, state, and county forest systems were developed to prevent that type of clear-cutting ever again. They are still mining old sunken logs from the big lakes and rivers here, but the thing is that these are luxury items now. In this era of engineered beams and steel studs, natural wooden beams are no longer needed. I have watched loggers snip down trees (no axes or chainsaws needed) and the same machine strips off the branches and then the 'log' goes into a giant chipper. The wood leaves the forest in the form of a truck full of wood chips. It is later formed into oxboard, engineered beams, or cooked into cardboard/paper etc. Depending on your perspective, one of the benefits is increased game species such as whitetail deer and grouse which thrive on forest openings and new growth. Almost nothing other than trees lives in dense old forests.

One method of "forestry" that I have not seen mentioned here and may only be a southern custom, is the one in which timber companies purchase the timber rights on a piece of property. The company, after installation of totally ineffective "best management practices - BMP's" clear cut the land for the most part and replant nothing. Land so forested looks much like the no-man's land of WWI trench warfare. Not only does the land look to be blasted to smithereens, the runoff from the cleared areas, filtered only by rock check dams in natural water runoff swales, fills natural streams and rivers with tons of sediment. As many of these forestry companies are selling the products to chipboard manufactures, they take almost everything above ground. That's a sight that is far worse than tree plantations, but eventually may lead to a more mixed second growth forest.

In addition, these operations damage the road systems typically found in rural areas and which are not designed to carry the heavy loads generated by dozens of logging trucks. The cost of the repair of the roads naturally falls to the government, funded by taxpayer dollars. As an "agricultural" practice or industry, the timber companies benefit from a lowered standard of environmental protection intended to benefit family farm level of agriculture. And even family farms are more environmentally stable or friendly through the efforts of the Natural Resources Conservation System (formally the Soil Conservation System), a Federal agency created in the 1930's to help stymie the lost of topsoils from agricultural fields.

It's amazing, from an environmental perspective, how we make progress in one area only to lose ground elsewhere. It's also amazing how the federal government allows timbering in the national forests (not parks) for only a few dollars on the acre. That's why you can still buy redwood timber. Not much cultivation of redwood plantations, at least to the best of my knowledge. Sustainability is a concept that has not reached very far into the consciousness of the forestry industry.