In the book Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill, Greystone Books, Vancouver, 2011, the author writes about the people who plant trees for a living. We all know trees are a valuable export from North America and the wood to build houses comes from somewhere, after the logs are cut from the Cascadia area or the west coast – California, Oregon, Washington State and British Columbia, someone needs to plant trees for more to grow in the future. The book describes the people who do this and as the many things you learn about the environment as they do the work. In addition, there are interesting sidebars about the uses of trees. For most of us, planting a tree is a trip to the nursery or making a donation to a group which will plant trees. The trees in the book are fir trees which come in test tube size and the group will plant near a million trees before moving on to the next destination to plant another million trees and it continues.

One side bar in the book was about countries and their need for trees and a simple theory about the size of the Roman Empire and what drove it. At one time the Roman Empire covered much of Europe, Africa and the Middle East and at the time was the greatest empire in the world. Different reasons are given for the size and one of them was the discipline of the legions or the military. The Emperor would go to war every 5 years or so and would demand a fleet of ships. The ships were wooden, where did the wood come from? At first it came from Italy, but that did not last long, then the empire took trees from Europe and Asia Minor, as the demand for fleets grew new lands needed to be taken for their resources. Perhaps if you watch the first part of the movie Gladiator from 2000, you will know why they are in the part of the country they are in.

In one of the frequent wars between France and England many years ago, the timber came from the Baltic area (Sweden, Finland) and who controlled the Baltic had a strategic advantage. When France controlled the Baltic, England found its colonies in North America rich in timberland. The tide was shortly turned and wood has been a constant export product from North America and a reason to invest.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, whatever industry you are in, your sense of the importance to the world is made. In this case the importance of trees and the search for resources. While planting trees is a great thing, trees take a long time to grow back to the desirable heights, but there needs to be a start, perhaps even more should be done. A question for the forest companies is when do they cut the new growth and what do they meant by that? In the search for a sustainable continuing dividend, you want to ensure the time frames allow the dividend to happen.

There are always more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions