International Paper Follows Monsanto's Blueprint to Grow `Frankenforests'

[Purveyor]

By Jack Kaskey

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- International Paper Co., the world’s largest pulp and paper maker, plans to remake commercial forests in the same way Monsanto Co. revolutionized farms with genetically modified crops.

International Paper’s ArborGen joint venture with MeadWestvaco Corp. and New Zealand’s Rubicon Ltd. is seeking permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to sell the first genetically engineered forest trees outside China. The Australian eucalyptus trees are designed to survive freezes in the U.S. South.

Plantations of engineered trees would give International Paper a competitive advantage by providing a reliable supply of lower cost wood at a time when timberlands are dwindling because of development, said David Liebetreu, the Memphis, Tennessee- based company’s vice president of global sourcing. Opponents are concerned that alien genes may contaminate natural forests, echoing objections to modified crops that Monsanto still faces.

--CLIP--
Increasing Risk

Engineered eucalyptus trees could be an ecological disaster, bringing increased fire risk and extraordinary water consumption to a new environment, said Neil J. Carman, an Austin, Texas-based member of the Sierra Club’s genetic engineering committee. Easier-to-pulp trees will be weak, and hurricanes will spread their pollen and contaminate native forests, he said.

“These are Frankenforests,” Carman said. “You are tampering with Mother Nature in a big way by putting genetically engineered trees out there.”

The group won a court order in 2007 requiring Monsanto to pull modified alfalfa plants from the market while the USDA reviewed their environmental impact more thoroughly, and Carman said a similar strategy may be used against modified trees.

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BLOOMBERG: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aEHNB_XJRWGU

[phantom power]

1. Are these going to be trees that don't reproduce naturally?

Like their crops?

[liberal N proud]

3. The reason they did that with crops is to keep you buying their seed

Year after year.

[phantom power]

4. Right, and I can't think of any reason they wouldn't do the same with trees.

If you want to plant their trees, you have to buy the seeds from them. No "cheating" by planting seeds from existing trees.

[Fotoware58]

10. Ultra-fast growing native trees seeds...

are available for FREEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I measured and core-sampled a tree down there in South Carolina in my forest inventory gig some years ago. The pine tree was 29 years old, 93 feet tall, 14.5 inches dbh and had put on 3.5 inches of radial growth in the last 10 years!! Do we really need something that grows faster than THAT?!?

[ensho]

2. No to these trees, No and No and No

nt

[hunter]

5. And if the genes for frost resistance escape into the wild...

... can we sue Monsanto when these trees start growing as weeds all over the South?

Here in California the Eucalyptus / Poison Oak forests are unpleasant, burn explosively in dry weather, and kill off native species. Native poison oak's ability to coexist with eucalyptus is remarkable. Eucalyptus trees produce toxins that kill off other competing plants.

Growing eucalyptus for pulpwood seems a very bad idea. It wipes out species diversity -- a eucalyptus forest is very much like an herbicide drenched monoculture corn field. When there is a drought eucalyptus burns.

It's time for us to abandon the practice of making paper from trees. Just because we can do it, just because that's the way we've been doing it for a long time, doesn't mean that's the way we always have to do it.

[tama]

9. Hemp fiber is better

for paper making. And birch sheen can be used as paper directly, without any industry interfering.

[GreenPartyVoter]

11. Agreed. The paper industry would be better off branching out (no pun intended) into

commercial hemp.

[Fotoware58]

12. Another non-native species?!?!

NO!

Besides, why do we need so much paper?!? The "Dead Tree Press" is having a tough time and shouldn't we let those publications die?!?

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. I don't feel like

rinsing out the cloths after every time I use the bathroom.

[tama]

15. What's wrong

with non-native species? Humans are non-native species in America, native species only in Africa. I shouldn't plant and eat tomatos and potatoes because they are non-native species here, native just in America?

[Fotoware58]

16. Soooo?

Let me get this straight... You want to displace native species that are perfectly adapted, need no fertilizer, no plowing and also support all sorts of native animals (including endangered species), and plant hemp, instead?? Or do you want to displace food crops, instead?!?!

Hmmmm, I guess making rolling papers out of hemp is just sooooooooo......ummmmmm........"natural"?!?!

[tama]

19. Nooouuu

and yes. Sort of.

First, general notions. Humans are a gardening species, not the only such species but the most versatile one. Through human evolution our species has made pacts of coevolution with numerous plant and animal species. It is sort of hubristic to think that just humans use other species, because in coevolution the relationship is mutual, plants and animals equally "use" humans to spread and develop their genepool. So, if you eat American apples and applepie you eat fruits from tree that is native to Eurasia, spread by seeds to America by Johnny Appleseed, now very well adapted to it's new continent. As a gardening species humans have exceptional talent for increasing biodiversity (as well as decreasing it if and when collective insanity takes over, as is the current situation).

As for Hemp, it's a crop for food (seeds, oil made from), fiber (-> clothes, ropes, paper etc.), energy (biomass for heating) and spiritual work/relaxation. In permaculture gardening hemp is also considered a plant that improves soil (leaving plenty of root mass).

As for Eucalyptus, spreading it through monoculture treefields for industrial purposes is IMO another symptom or our current collective insanity.

And as for Kudzu, hmm...?! ;)

[Fotoware58]

20. What is wrong with....

using the native pines, which are quite fast growing, and quite suitable for sawlogs AND biomass AND paper?? What advantages does hemp have that make it worthwhile to displace natural pine forests (and the natural residents)??? It has taken many years to recover and rehabilitate the old cotton fields of the South. Now, you want a return to agriculture at the expense of forests?

[tama]

21. What is wrong

is turning any forest into monoculture tree field - native or not native trees - and then slaughter it to produce pulp. Or more generally, cutting down any forest. Few logs here and there is an other matter.

So who is saying anything about cutting remaining forests for hemp fields? Hemp is excellent for shifting cultivation on existing fields because it helps to preserve the fertility of soil, one year cultivating hemp, next year something else etc.

[Fotoware58]

22. The forests I saw....

in south Carolina had staggering diversity. I counted at least 45 different species!!! So, go ahead and replace other crops with hemp. I'm not against that unless people are going hungry. Pulp production in the South on Forest Service lands is always done under thinning projects. On the other hand, forestry on private lands down there is QUITE ugly. It's a good thing that those forests recover pretty quickly. We DO need uses for the biomass that comes out of Federal thinning projects. Paper is a good use but, IMHO, generating clean power is a much better use for sustainable Federal biomass.

My takehome message is that natural forests can supply so many products and that substituting non-native plants and removing native forests is NOT the way to go.

How does hemp do against kenak?? I heard about that many years ago. How about bamboo? I'm still leery of non-native species. What safeguards are there to keep hemp from becoming "ditch weed", supplanting other native species?

[NickB79]

23. "What safeguards are there to keep hemp from becoming "ditch weed""

Hemp is already a "ditch weed" pretty much throughout the US. I don't think planting more of it will make much of a difference at this point in time.

[tama]

24. California

used to be vast permaculture forest garden created by native gardeners through thousands of years of controlled burning and other gardening methods. And then the Europeans came and stopped the controlled fires in order to grow their tree crops... and the fires went bad and the paradise was no more: aeoe.org/resources/fire/Firepaper.pdf

I fail to understand you gripe against hemp. It's gone wild in America too, ages ago, adding to biodiversity and not replacing anything that I know of, since Europeans came first time, George Washington was a hemp farmer and the Constitution was written on hemp paper. The history of ban against hemp goes back to big land owners wanting to sell their tree fields for paper when hemp was too superior to compete against otherwise than political means. The hemp ban was lifted shortly during the WW2 when war effort was in dire need of hemp products. Couple years ago an indian tribe wanted to start growing hemp on their land, and the Feds wanted to ban that. Don't know what happened.

I mean, I just fail to understand why you oppose hemp of all plants, because it's such a nice and benevolent plant and even indian gardeners aren't against it. I'm not really trying to tell you what you should do where you live, you belong to your land and your land belongs to you, I'm just telling you what I know and trying to understand why you think as you do.

[Fotoware58]

25. Just playing with ya!

I sometimes like to play the role of "Hardcore Environmentalist", who is against ANYTHING that is "unnatural", at least as THEY see it! No one knows what the truly "natural" landscape was, as man has altered it to fit his own uses. Before man crossed the land bridge, who knows what THAT truly "natural" landscape looked like?

In my extensive travels to many states, I have NEVER seen this "ditch weed" that people talk about. Not saying it isn't there but....if it was in the areas I visited, I would surely have seen it. Yes, hemp has proven to be a VERY valuable plant around the world and the cultural bias against it here is unwarranted.

Roleplaying can be FUN!

[tama]

26. YOU PHONY BASTARD!

I had a nagging sense that something wasn't quite right but couldn't put my finger on it... :)

Well played, it was fun for me too. :)

[Fotoware58]

6. Bleahhhhhh

A step backwards. The South grows trees soooooo very well and we surely don't need such manipulated trees growing there.

+1

[NNadir]

7. Since we're on the topic of tree genetics, had genetic engineering been possible

in the 1950's, we would have been able, probably, to insert a blight resistant gene into the American Chestnut, and have thus restored this tree to the North American forest it once dominated.

There would now be 50 year old American Chestnuts in the forest.

Happily the American Chestnut Foundation has been able to breed resistance into some trees, and trees exist that are 15/16 American Chestnut stock, but much has been lost.

It would have been better to have inserted one gene.

However genetic changes are terrible things, and I am certainly among the many who are calling for the abandonment of evolution.

There is no good earthly reason that trees shouldn't have to adapt to things like say, the Gypsy Moth, and if they can't cut it, be gone.

[Dead_Parrot]

17. However, Monsanto do genetics the way the Chinese do dams

There's a world of difference between "engineering" and "good engineering": Look at the Trabant, the Hyatt Regency Walkway and this effort:



Genetic engineering is like any other science - it can be used for good, evil or corporate greed. Monsanto have the third option covered nicely.

[phantom power]

18. Like DP said, I don't really mind the genetic engineering...

it's the part where monsanto engineers plants that can't reproduce, thus fucking the farmers. Or foresters? And their lawsuits in the service of corporate evil, etc.

This is clearly a case where govt genetic engineering would be preferable. Or non-profit-motivated solutions. Even though Monsanto is evil, I have a hard time blaming them too much. I mean, if you are a corporation trying to maintain profitability, releasing seeds that reproduce faithfully is a biz-plan loser, for obvious reasons.

[AdHocSolver]

8. A couple of thousand years from now, archaeologists will be trying to discover...

...how 'M' 'O' 'N' 'S' 'A' 'N' 'T' 'O' and 'I' 'N' 'T' 'E' 'R' 'N' 'A' 'T' 'I' 'O' 'N' 'A' 'L' 'P' 'A' 'P' 'E' 'R' destroyed civilization.

[morningglory]

14. Eucalyptus trees suck up so much water that they caused a river to go dry

in Australia. They had spread along the banks to get the water.