Kernels of Wisdom from the Chief Nut
Reprinted from Black Walnut Tree Topics, Volume 8 Number 4, Fall 2000
At this year's field day, I alluded to some coming changes affecting the way American Forestry Technology does business. Since these changes will have an impact on most ABWA members, I thought it would be a suitable topic for this column.
At that point in time AFT had been discussing areas of mutual interest with one of the world's leading companies in "green" industries for two months.
Since then, AFT has formed a new company called Seche-O. AFT becomes a division of that new company.
The parent company is Grupo Guascor, which manufactures and sells a vast array of state-of-the art systems and equipment, including:
- Marine propulsion equipment
- Cogeneration and trigeneration plants
- Power plants
- Supplies of diesel, natural gas and biogas engines
- Energy recovery of used automobile oils
- Energy recovery from solid municipality waste and sewage treatment plants
- Livestock waste treatment systems
- Wind energy systems
- Hydro-electric power plants
- Biomass power plants
- Livestock feed operations based on hydroponics
With headquarters just outside Madrid, Spain, Grupo Guascor is a global company with operations and offices in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa.
Grupo Guascor is a forward-looking, progressive company with a strong commitment to providing economical and environmentally sound solutions to problems facing growing economies around the world. With profits of a billion dollars last year, Grupo Guascor has the resources to develop a wide variety of improved hardwood trees.
In keeping with their commitment to providing economical and environmentally sound solutions, Seche-O will be investing heavily in developing new genetically superior varieties of many popular hardwood species, including bur oak, red oak, and chinkapin oak.
They will also be looking at new methods of clonal propagation, such as stem-rooting and tissue culture. These methods can have significant benefits over grafting in terms of reduced time and cost.
During early discussions with Seche management, it did look as if the trees AFT produces were not going to be offered for sale. Now, I'm happy to say, AFT is going to continue to sell trees.
Only the availability of dormant grafted trees will be limited. But that's nothing new because they've always sold out of dormant grafts early. Other than that there's very little that will directly affect you.
Seche-O (AFT) is in the process of building a new office, new greenhouses, a pole barn, research lab, and more, at a new site of 117 acres [outside of West Lafayette, Indiana not far from the old AFT headquarters], called the Highlands.
Next year's field day will be held at the Highlands so that you'll be able to see for yourself how extensive the new company's commitment is. I guarantee you'll love it.
They've planted 100 acres in new trees for research as well as for production. Next spring they will plant over 200 more acres.
They will be planting 13,000 acres of trees in Argentina and Spain over the next few years.
As their trees reach harvestable size, they will be investing in vertical integration technologies, such as veneer and saw mills, etc.
This bodes well for those of us who raise these genetically superior trees. While we want to get as much money as possible for our trees, we don't want them priced out of the market. Therefore, keeping processing costs to a minimum and eliminating middle men, will be of great advantage to us all. It will allow us to control the prices we are paid.
While this is a good deal for AFT, the real winner is the world economy.
The most remarkable thing of all is that this has been accomplished without government help. (Is that an oxymoron?)
In this era of "Big Brother" government, where bureaucrats insist they know what a "pregnant chad" means, such nonintervention is indeed rare.
This fall AFT made a great effort to collect 500,000 Purdue #1 nuts. They came very close. Thanks to all who helped.
Thanks especially to Dale Davis, who was the brians behind the project. Phil Powell, John Dayhuff, Sean and I did all the work.
AFT planted 30 acres of nuts in their nursery, plus 160 bushels of acorns from five species of oak.
Next year's field day will be held the last week in October [2001] at the Highlands to accomodate those bringing us nuts.
Hope you have a happy holiday and wonderful winter!
Norman J. O'Bryan
Chief Nut