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Did anyone else find the 350M number implausible? They claim it happened in 12 hours. Unless they're talking about planting seeds, I find it hard to believe a

Did anyone else find the 350M number implausible? They claim it happened in 12 hours. Unless they're talking about planting seeds, I find it hard to believe and take this story just as a political stunt. Ethiopia's population is 100M. Did 10% participate in this somehow, and each person plant 35 trees across the country? How would you even get that many trees to plant?

icebraining 7y ago
Apparently they're seedlings, not just seeds. Seems to be a large campaign; one company alone was boasting about having planted 1M. But I have no idea if it's verified in any way.
lazyasciiart 7y ago
They've been planning this for a while. Lots of schools and government offices were closed so people could do this - I wouldn't be surprised if more than 10% of people were involved.
- netllama 7y ago
  They didn't mention that most schools in Ethiopia are half day by default (because they lack sufficient teachers & school rooms to educate all the children for a full day). So in reality, most children wouldn't have been in school for half the day regardless.
simplicio 7y ago
Yea, it does feel like there must be some fine print behind that number. FWIW, the Minister's twitter account does specify tree seedlings, so it doesn't sound like they just airdropped 350 million seeds or anything like that. Though the limiting factor on how fast you can plant trees is more the production of seedlings than the physical labor of planting. So I guess if they've spend the last several months growing and distributing seedlings in preparation for this campaign, actually plainting them all in one day isn't so crazy
moksly 7y ago
I have a friend who has a small business doing, well I actually have no clue what the English word for it is, but its direct translation would be “Nature Nursing/Care taking”. A descriptive translation would be something like a wild nature gartner. I asked him and he said it would be little trouble to plant that many seedlings if you coordinates the efforts and planned for it. He also told me that these stunts, like airlines planting a lot of trees to go carbon neutral, often ends up with a lot of dead trees. Because the hard part isn’t planting trees it’s making sure they survive the first five years.
- PakG1 7y ago
  Now that is interesting. What are the challenges for making sure the trees survive the first five years? Do you have any knowledge you can help to elaborate?
  - samstave 7y ago
    My assumption is making sure they get enough water.
    - baud147258 7y ago
      Perhaps also not get eaten by herbivores, not damaged by bigger animals, humans and vehicles and protected from insects.
      - blaser-waffle 7y ago
        All valid points, but Ethiopia is a dry mountainous country next to other dry countries. It already has a track record for droughts and famines. Proper irrigation probably the #1 problem.
  - moksly 7y ago
    As I understand it, it’s a range of things. Water and protection from animals, as other mentioned, is a big part of it. But so is growth speed, most trees grow rather slow, but grass, weeds and shrubbery doesn’t. This means that seedlings can lose the struggle for sunlight if you don’t “now the lawn” around them. There is also quality of the seedlings. The best example is kitchen herbs. If you buy some rosemary in a pot at you local supermarket, it’ll taste fine. It’ll probably also survive long enough for you to eat it. If you try to plant it in your garden with the intention of keeping rosemary around for years, then there is a good chance it’ll have died within its first month. That’s because supermarket herbs are mass produced in safe environments, where long term survival isn’t valued. You could get lucky, but you’d have a much higher rate of success if you buy your rosemary from a grower who grew them to be planted outside. This is both slower and more expensive though. Getting 350 million seedlings, often as cheap as you can, is easier with the mass-production approach, and that’s typically what these projects do.
maxmcorp 7y ago
"The average British Columbian planter plants 1 600 trees per day,[5] but it is not uncommon for experienced planters to plant up to 4,000 trees per day" https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_planting https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_planting
- antisthenes 7y ago
  I looked at the source of that and it seems to come from a "Preventing Tree Planting Injuries" safety manual. They state that you can plant 100-200 trees per hour, and extrapolate that to planting 8x a day (presumably assuming an 8 hour work day). Simply using common sense will tell you that this number is total nonsense, unless you're using seeds and just tossing them into the ground. 200 trees per hour assumes 1 tree every 18 seconds. Multiple issues here: 1. The work is strenuous. I've planted trees before the proper way and it's not something you can do for 8 hours day in day out without breaks. Digging is intense work that requires frequent breaks even for a person who is in shape. 2. You need to have 1600 saplings available somewhere. Simply taking the time to bring 1 sapling to the dug hole will take you probably anywhere between 10 and 30 seconds. The farther away the hole from the sapling collection, the longer it will take, possibly up to a minute. 3. 18 seconds for digging a tree hole is absolute nonsense as well. This assumes top quality topsoil that's already been prepped for planting (trees or other plants). It basically assumes garden soil quality and no need to dig the hole back up once you planted the tree. 4. You need put the dug up soil back and cover the exposed roots with either soil that you dug up or good soil that was brought to the planting site. You also need to water the soil afterward and compress it around the roots to make sure the sapling doesn't fall from the slightest gust of wind. This easily triples the time compared to just "digging a hole". Basically - don't believe the first number you see on the wikipedia or the internet. The source is not reputable and sounds like it was written by a person who hasn't done a day of garden work in their life. I also wouldn't really consider anything less than a 2-3ft sapling a tree. And I wouldn't consider it "planted" unless it survives at least the next year.
bagacrap 7y ago
3.5 trees per person, not 35.
- dlhavema 7y ago
  They were assuming 10% would participate, so that's why he had to bump it up 10x to accommodate.
nicoburns 7y ago
I have a friend who works planting trees (small saplings). She says she targets 3000/day.
Forbo 7y ago
The first thing that came to mind was seed bombing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_ball#Seed_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_ball#Seed_bombing Edit: This doesn't account for all the volunteers that they say participated in the effort, so they probably didn't use this method.

icebraining 7y ago

Apparently they're seedlings, not just seeds. Seems to be a large campaign; one company alone was boasting about having planted 1M. But I have no idea if it's verified in any way.

lazyasciiart 7y ago

They've been planning this for a while. Lots of schools and government offices were closed so people could do this - I wouldn't be surprised if more than 10% of people were involved.

netllama 7y ago
They didn't mention that most schools in Ethiopia are half day by default (because they lack sufficient teachers & school rooms to educate all the children for a full day). So in reality, most children wouldn't have been in school for half the day regardless.

simplicio 7y ago

Yea, it does feel like there must be some fine print behind that number. FWIW, the Minister's twitter account does specify tree seedlings, so it doesn't sound like they just airdropped 350 million seeds or anything like that. Though the limiting factor on how fast you can plant trees is more the production of seedlings than the physical labor of planting. So I guess if they've spend the last several months growing and distributing seedlings in preparation for this campaign, actually plainting them all in one day isn't so crazy

moksly 7y ago

I have a friend who has a small business doing, well I actually have no clue what the English word for it is, but its direct translation would be “Nature Nursing/Care taking”. A descriptive translation would be something like a wild nature gartner. I asked him and he said it would be little trouble to plant that many seedlings if you coordinates the efforts and planned for it. He also told me that these stunts, like airlines planting a lot of trees to go carbon neutral, often ends up with a lot of dead trees. Because the hard part isn’t planting trees it’s making sure they survive the first five years.

PakG1 7y ago
Now that is interesting. What are the challenges for making sure the trees survive the first five years? Do you have any knowledge you can help to elaborate?
- samstave 7y ago
  My assumption is making sure they get enough water.
  - baud147258 7y ago
    Perhaps also not get eaten by herbivores, not damaged by bigger animals, humans and vehicles and protected from insects.
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      All valid points, but Ethiopia is a dry mountainous country next to other dry countries. It already has a track record for droughts and famines. Proper irrigation probably the #1 problem.
- moksly 7y ago
  As I understand it, it’s a range of things. Water and protection from animals, as other mentioned, is a big part of it. But so is growth speed, most trees grow rather slow, but grass, weeds and shrubbery doesn’t. This means that seedlings can lose the struggle for sunlight if you don’t “now the lawn” around them. There is also quality of the seedlings. The best example is kitchen herbs. If you buy some rosemary in a pot at you local supermarket, it’ll taste fine. It’ll probably also survive long enough for you to eat it. If you try to plant it in your garden with the intention of keeping rosemary around for years, then there is a good chance it’ll have died within its first month. That’s because supermarket herbs are mass produced in safe environments, where long term survival isn’t valued. You could get lucky, but you’d have a much higher rate of success if you buy your rosemary from a grower who grew them to be planted outside. This is both slower and more expensive though. Getting 350 million seedlings, often as cheap as you can, is easier with the mass-production approach, and that’s typically what these projects do.

maxmcorp 7y ago

"The average British Columbian planter plants 1 600 trees per day,[5] but it is not uncommon for experienced planters to plant up to 4,000 trees per day" https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_planting https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_planting

antisthenes 7y ago
I looked at the source of that and it seems to come from a "Preventing Tree Planting Injuries" safety manual. They state that you can plant 100-200 trees per hour, and extrapolate that to planting 8x a day (presumably assuming an 8 hour work day). Simply using common sense will tell you that this number is total nonsense, unless you're using seeds and just tossing them into the ground. 200 trees per hour assumes 1 tree every 18 seconds. Multiple issues here: 1. The work is strenuous. I've planted trees before the proper way and it's not something you can do for 8 hours day in day out without breaks. Digging is intense work that requires frequent breaks even for a person who is in shape. 2. You need to have 1600 saplings available somewhere. Simply taking the time to bring 1 sapling to the dug hole will take you probably anywhere between 10 and 30 seconds. The farther away the hole from the sapling collection, the longer it will take, possibly up to a minute. 3. 18 seconds for digging a tree hole is absolute nonsense as well. This assumes top quality topsoil that's already been prepped for planting (trees or other plants). It basically assumes garden soil quality and no need to dig the hole back up once you planted the tree. 4. You need put the dug up soil back and cover the exposed roots with either soil that you dug up or good soil that was brought to the planting site. You also need to water the soil afterward and compress it around the roots to make sure the sapling doesn't fall from the slightest gust of wind. This easily triples the time compared to just "digging a hole". Basically - don't believe the first number you see on the wikipedia or the internet. The source is not reputable and sounds like it was written by a person who hasn't done a day of garden work in their life. I also wouldn't really consider anything less than a 2-3ft sapling a tree. And I wouldn't consider it "planted" unless it survives at least the next year.

bagacrap 7y ago

3.5 trees per person, not 35.

dlhavema 7y ago
They were assuming 10% would participate, so that's why he had to bump it up 10x to accommodate.

nicoburns 7y ago

I have a friend who works planting trees (small saplings). She says she targets 3000/day.

Forbo 7y ago

The first thing that came to mind was seed bombing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_ball#Seed_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_ball#Seed_bombing Edit: This doesn't account for all the volunteers that they say participated in the effort, so they probably didn't use this method.