• May 2022

    Mama Earth has monitoring teams for its trees in Monkayo and Montevista that are out every weekday.

When reading the word „tree farming“, many people immediately think of monoculture plantations in which only predetermined trees grow and all other trees and bushes have to give way. Some explanations are important for Mama Earth‘s mahogany and teak plantations:
We do not have a classical plantation system, but a product that helps farmers to keep their land and generate income from their farms, without any capital investment. The trees grow where the land is not used, i.e. is not used to produce food. The farmers can continue to cultivate their crops (coconut palms, maize crops, beans, etc.) as before. The question why they do not use all the land is easy to answer: they have no money. This should change after the timber harvest, because otherwise the next generation will not continue the farms either. Our concept is unique because we only plant land that was unused and grant the farmers 50 percent of the net timber yield. This statement only applies to our planting areas in Monkayo and Montevista.

Wild growth is not bad because it promotes biodiversity, but the undergrowth must not absorb too many nutrients.

This is how your trees grow after the monitoring teams have cleared the planting areas of undergrowth.

Our planting areas in Patag are very different from those in Davao de Oro (Montevista and Monkayo). In the past, the logging companies only harvested, never reforested. What remains are hundreds of square kilometer‘s of open areas.

The situation is different in Patag. There are almost no farms here, because in the past the loggers left nothing but bare land. We plant their trees there at intervals of four by four metres. This way, the local residents, but also the workers of Mama Earth, can grow vegetables between the trees when the trees have formed deep roots. The region is ideally suited for growing vegetables because it gets cool after sunset. Accordingly, broccoli and leaf lettuce grow well, as do strawberries.
The proportions are the same. From the harvest, the tribes living there, whose members provide the land, get their share of 50 %, measured by the net timber yield. And until the harvest, there is a lot of work and good income for the people there.
So if you decide to buy a teak or mahogany share in Mama Earth, you not only get a very good return, of money it is also a programme that secures jobs and income for many people. At the same time, the cultivation of timber protects the natural forests from illegal logging.

One question remains: When will you join?

In Patag, too, our people are on duty every day, because trees need especially much care in the first three years.

To prevent the grass from growing, we cover a square metre around the seedling with foil for the teak plantings.

Questions about the topic? Ask them to us!