• The LIFE Wood for Future/Madera para el Futuro project will finance planting and care in the demonstration plots.

• The foresters will receive training in sustainable forest management and obtain better prices for their certified wood.

At least twenty landowners in the Vega have taken the first steps this week to become a Poplar Wood Ecoproducers Group, the first in Spain, sponsored by LIFE Wood for Future/Madera para el Futuro, a project funded by the European Union to promote a poplar bioeconomy in the province of Granada.

The owners attended a working meeting this Monday organized by the Confederation of Organizations of Foresters of Spain (COSE), the Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training (Ifapa) of the Andalusian Government and the University of Granada (UGR).

The manager of COSE, Patricia Gómez, and the representative of the Forestry Association of Navarra, Eduardo Montero, explained the administrative procedures that owners must follow to set up the group, draw up a common management plan and obtain the group Sustainable Forestry Certification that will enable them to obtain greater profitability from their crops.
Gómez pointed out that the creation of the group will facilitate the application of silvicultural treatments to improve the quality of the product and carry out preventive silviculture; it will enable them to obtain aid through public administrations and the European Union; it will favor their participation in innovation and plantation improvement projects; and it will help them to negotiate the sale of their production from a stronger position.

LIFE Timber for the Future will take care of the formalities and expenses involved in the constitution of the group and will offer the associated owners various economic incentives. The ecoproducers undertake to maintain a frame (distance between trees) of 5×5 or 6×4 meters; use certified plants from local nurseries; incorporate pruning remains and stumps into the soil to nourish it and retain the carbon captured; use ecological fertilizers and, only in cases of extreme necessity, phytosanitary products; and maintain a vegetation band of poplars, shrubs or herbaceous plants on the plot boundaries. In exchange, during the first year they will receive up to 1,400 euros per hectare to purchase and plant the poplars, maintain the vegetation strip and grind the stumps, and in the following years, up to 400 euros per hectare for soil work, pruning and shredding of pruning debris.

Environmental advantages

Poplar wood is a highly valued product, in great demand,” explained Patricia Gómez. The creation of a group of producers is a great opportunity for the province of Granada to generate wealth with a natural resource that has great environmental advantages, since poplar trees are green filters: they capture atmospheric CO2, act as natural purifiers that filter water polluted by agriculture, are habitat for birds and regulate the climate by providing shade and cooling the temperature”.
Also those owners of the province who want to join the group but have their trees already planted can join, since, until the next cutting, they can adapt their production to sustainable management and enter the voluntary emissions market, the so-called ‘carbon farming’, that is, receive money for the CO2 captured by their crops, about 22 tons per hectare.
The COSE manager, who highlighted “the enthusiasm and excitement” she has found in the owners of Granada, stressed that working collectively will allow producers to save costs and reduce risks, especially with the support of European funding and the backing of local institutions, and offer a stable and quality production that could attract a zero kilometer poplar wood processing industry.

A highly valued product

Joaquín Garnica, general manager of Bosques y Ríos, a company with 25 years of experience that manages, through various formulas of collaboration with 650 landowners, 1,700 hectares of poplar groves in the Duero and Ebro basins, whose production it sells to the Riojan company Garnica, a world leader in the plywood industry.
Joaquín Garnica, who offered this Tuesday a pruning workshop to interested owners, in cooperation with María Ángeles Ripoll, Ifapa researcher, and the local company Agroservicios Hijo Celedonio, explained that through genetic selection and proper care they seek to obtain straight trunks, of sufficient thickness and without knots, which have an excellent output in international markets.
This wood is now highly valued, due to the extraordinary growth capacity of poplar -which reaches maturity in only 15 years- and the whiteness, lightness and ease of mechanization of the wood, highly demanded in the manufacture of furniture, decoration and in the automotive industry, for example, in boats, trains and caravans.

Poplar Online

The workshop was also attended by the University of León (Ponferrada Campus), through Professor Flor Álvarez, who together with the company Bosques y Ríos has developed an online tool (Chopo4D) that allows owners to know the amount of wood they have in their trees and its expected evolution, to decide when to cut it and sell it. The tool, now validated for poplar groves in the Ebro and Duero basins, aims to be calibrated for the province of Granada, in collaboration with the University of Granada and Ifapa.