The commitment of Santa Fe nurseries, which this year quadrupled their production of seedlings, is a symptom of the recovery of poplar groves in the province.Wood with guarantees

The LIFE Wood for Future project and the record price of poplar wood on the market have encouraged the creation of three new certified plant nurseries in the province in the last two years. Given the signs of revival of this traditional crop, entrepreneurs Juan Carlos Cano, Curro Santos and Isaac Rodriguez, all based in Santa Fe, in the Vega de Granada, have opted to exponentially expand the area dedicated to the breeding of new plants to supply their own poplar groves and supply the foresters of the environment.

“The certified plant nursery was born out of the need to replant our 600 marjales (about 32 hectares) of poplar trees. When we first learned about the LIFE project, the light bulb went on, because we saw that there was no certified plant nursery in Granada. We sourced plants from León and thus Certichopo was born in 2021,” explains Curro Santos, a partner in Hermanos Santos Nieto, which last year sold 12,000 one-year-old ‘barbones’ and next year will have more than 55,000 available.

One of the main reasons for the increase in demand is the price of poplar wood, which is reaching record figures due to the scarcity of this raw material on the market. In Andalusia, thanks to the climate, the cutting cycle is about 10-11 years, so now the abandonment of populiculture is being noticed due to its lack of profitability during the crisis years of 2008-2014 and its replacement by intensive crops with annual profitability, such as corn, asparagus, garlic or alfalfa. In Castilla-León, Spain’s leader in populiculture, historic prices have been reached this year, with lots at more than 250 euros per cubic meter at the Zamora auction.

“In 2015 they were selling the cubic meter of wood at 35 or 36 euros. It was giving away the work of ten years. Last year it sold for around 75 euros and this year I already have an offer of 110 euros,” explains Juan Carlos Cano, who cultivates 123 hectares of poplar both in the Vega and in the Guadix region on a property, rental or sharecropping basis. Owner of Agroservicios Hijo Celedonio SL, his 3-hectare nursery in Santa Fe sold 14,000 seedlings in 2021 and this year has planted 25,000.

“The only way people will be encouraged to plant poplars is if they see that it is a profitable crop. Hopefully they will be encouraged and the poplar groves of the Vega will recover,” corroborates Isaac Rodríguez, who has 30 hectares of poplar trees on his farm on the Atarfe road, has always been dedicated to raising young plants and this year, for the first time, will do so with 28,000 certified plants.

Wood with guarantees

Until now, many foresters produced their own saplings from cuttings from pruning, or bought them from another owner, but could not guarantee their traceability or phytosanitary status. Certification guarantees the clone (variety) of the tree in question and, therefore, its density, elasticity and strength characteristics, which is essential when the wood is intended for the manufacture of structural elements for construction.

Thanks to the poplar’s great capacity for rooting and growth, a 30-centimeter stake sprouts and becomes a four- or five-meter bearded tree in just one year, ready to be planted between January and March, once the coldest days of winter have passed. In the nursery, the seedlings require “daily care” – watering, treating possible pests, cleaning the stems and weeding – to ensure the growth of strong, healthy trees.

The Diputación de Granada, a partner in this project, has just inaugurated a field of certified poplar stock at the Provincial Nursery to ensure the existence of locally certified plants for these nurseries and others that may be implemented in the province.

Proof of the interest that this traditional crop is awakening is that, of the 1,270 hectares that the recently created Granada Marjal Poplar Growers Group has, 318 are ‘new’, that is to say, they were dedicated until now to other crops or without use.

CO2 capture and green jobs

Antolino Gallego, Professor of Physics at the University of Granada and coordinator of the project, has expressed his satisfaction at what he considers a symptom that the recovery of this traditional crop, which had gone from about 12,000 to 4,000 hectares in the last twenty years, has already begun, which opens up hopeful prospects for the creation of a local industry of wooden structural elements for sustainable construction and guarantees the supply to existing packaging industries.

“It is good news not only for the economy of the province, but also for the environment, since poplar trees have a high capacity to capture carbon from the atmosphere, up to 30 tons per hectare per year, and provide other multiple environmental benefits: they act as green filters that clean the water that reaches the aquifers, moderate the flooding of rivers and protect against erosion, refresh the environment, preserve soil quality, improve air quality and are habitat for many species of fauna,” recalls Gallego.

Thus, he recalled that only the 108,000 barbones existing in these three nurseries, which will become trees in 2023, will have absorbed 70,000 tons of CO2 when their cycle ends in 2033, contributing significantly to the mitigation of climate change.

“The creation of these private nurseries means more bioeconomy and more green jobs,” concludes the LIFE project coordinator.

At the moment, in Granada, most poplar wood is used for ‘desenrollo’, which consists of cutting the trunk in a spiral to obtain a thin sheet used to make fruit containers or plywood boards. However, the use of certified plants and the increase of the frame (distance between trees) makes it possible to increase the diameter of the trunk and the quality of the wood and, therefore, improve its market prospects and its use in sectors where quality requirements are higher, such as sustainable construction.

LIFE Wood for Future/Madera para el Futuro is a project financed by the European Union’s LIFE program in its strategy against climate change and participated by the University of Granada, the Provincial Council, the Confederation of Forestry Organizations of Spain, the University of Santiago de Compostela and the spinoff 3eData. It has European funding to promote the recovery of poplar poplar groves in Granada through the promotion of a poplar bioeconomy in the province. One of its greatest achievements has been to promote the constitution of the Marjal Producers Group, which brings together 70 owners with almost 1,300 hectares of poplar groves, with the aim of carrying out a common management to obtain quality wood and exercise a common defense of their interests.