Is this garbage news?

[onlinebiker]

Story on NPR - 

Ethiopia planting 300,000,000 trees a day.


Now if you google this story, it shows up in multiple sources. They usually have a picture of a smiling man uprighting a small transplanted tree.

Sounds great. I've planted a bunch of trees myself.

But, I think they may be yanking our chain a bit.

Do the math.

First - define " planting a tree". If you are talking even a two year old seedling - it's not realistic. A million people all planting 300 trees a day?

If you define it as sticking a seed in the ground - it's doable - if you have trained manpower or the equipment. Considering Ethiopia has a history of starvation - you got to question their farming skills and infrastructure.

Call me skeptical.

[The Grand Nudger]

They claim millions of people were involved. It’s not hard to dig a trench and drop seedlings down ( or to broadcast seed)

Previous record was 66mil, idk.

Could it be done, yeah.. sure.

Their starvation issue doesn’t have anything to do with lack of agricultural skill, btw.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hey, it was a big deal when ONE tree grew in a borough of New York.

[onlinebiker]

They claim millions of people were involved.  It’s not hard to dig a trench and drop seedlings down ( or to broadcast seed)

Previous record was 66mil, idk.  

Could it be done, yeah.. sure.

Their starvation issue doesn’t have anything to do with lack of agricultural skill, btw.

Here' s my experience. 

I live in an area where they grow lots of ornamental spruce. (Xmas trees) I even had a grower plant 1500 or so trees on our back 40. This is an ideal area for these trees - which take 10-20 years to grow to a size they can use. It took a crew of 6 two or three days to plant all those trees.

They only had to irrigate the first year.

I seriously doubt they can drop a tree in a trench and forget about it - and expect it to grow. I expect the irrigation will be the greater share of time and expense.

And then - where do you get that many live seedlings? I cant even imagine the expense - and the difficulty of the logistics involved to transport those seedlings and keep them alive.


It' s possible I suppose - but it took the US CCC ten years to plant 3 billion trees. We had quite a bit more manpower.....

[The Grand Nudger]

Who knows if they’ll all grow. I’d be surprised if they did.

But let’s do some math....

6 people 24 hrs to plant 1500 trees. We should be able to work out how many trees they could plant in 12 hours if they had the labor claimed in the articles, assuming they planted the same kind of trees the same way with the same equipment .

Which, you know, they probably didn’t.

Like I said. Could it be done? Yeah, probably. Was it, idk...people do like to inflate the stats when it comes to breaking records.

[onlinebiker]

Who knows if they’ll all grow.  I’d be surprised if they did.

But let’s do some math....

Hey - I'm all for it. We NEED more trees. Any trees.

Anything is an improvement....

I just think the numbers are grossly inflated.

[Rev. Rye]

I'm not sure exactly how these trees are being planted. Here's my hypothesis, which I suspect may actually be wrong: many of these are glorified seedlings, which I suspect would be a lot easier to plant. I can recall once buying a little tube filled with a sapling of a Giant Sequoia (mine didn't last), and some of the saplings I've seen planted in GIS look about that size. It's worth noting that the population of Ethiopia is a bit over 100 million. Assuming that the entire population was involved (which I admittedly doubt), that works out to about 3.5 trees per day. Naturally, I doubt that the whole population was involved, but I suspect that, if you assume that a lot of those trees were about that size, the whole "350 million trees in one day" thing starts to become more plausible. Also, I suspect that Ethiopia wasn't alone in this project. Perhaps some of the infrastructure (and maybe some of the trees) came from other, more developed, nations that could have helped Ethiopia. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the trees didn't last.

[A. Secular Human]

Who knows if they’ll all grow.  I’d be surprised if they did.

But let’s do some math....

6 people 24 hrs to plant 1500 trees.  We should be able to work out how many trees they could plant in 12 hours if they had the labor claimed in the articles, assuming they planted the same kind of trees the same way with the same equipment .

Which, you know, they probably didn’t.

Like I said.  Could it be done?  Yeah, probably.  Was it, idk...people do like to inflate the stats when it comes to breaking records.

Jesus Christ!  That's too much like the "Two trains left their stations going towards each other...." type of math problems.

Fuck that, and get me a beer...

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Who knows if they’ll all grow.  I’d be surprised if they did.

But let’s do some math....

6 people 24 hrs to plant 1500 trees.  We should be able to work out how many trees they could plant in 12 hours if they had the labor claimed in the articles, assuming they planted the same kind of trees the same way with the same equipment .

Which, you know, they probably didn’t.

Like I said.  Could it be done?  Yeah, probably.  Was it, idk...people do like to inflate the stats when it comes to breaking records.

Jesus Christ!  That's too much like the "Two trains left their stations going towards each other...." type of math problems.

Fuck that, and get me a beer...

Or...

If an Ethiopian and a half can plant a tree and a half in a day and a half, how long will it take millions of Ethiopians to plant 300 000 000 trees?

But seriously, it doesn't seem all that difficult.  Remember, the story only says that the trees were planted and that 'millions' of people were involved.

But suppose all the prep-work was done beforehand?  All the little holes drilled (or dug) and the seedlings lined up next to them.  Assuming two million Ethiopians (the minimum qualifier for 'millions') took part.  Take it at face value that 300 million trees were planted in one day.  That's 150 trees per Ethiopian.  If it was done in, say, 12 hours, that means each person had to plant a little more than 12 trees per hour.  Four or five minutes strikes me as plenty of time to pick up a seedling, stick it in a pre-made hole and pat a bit of soil around it.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

I’d fire someone who took that long to seed.

I move at 2mph, and seed up to 2 units per linear foot. It can be done faster, I just like to take my time.