I have created the account @ecobanker. There is nothing there yet.
But in the spirit of moving ahead, I want to take some time today to go into what I see as the future of what we are doing.
A while ago, I mentioned around to see if anyone would be interested in 'buying land' and making a 'sustainable subdivision'. One of the things that crypto can do is give us access to more funding, and give those with funding more options to invest. Since I am on the front lines of working with sustainable development in a place where most people with funds never go, it seemed like a good option to 'test my network' and see who might be interested.
And I am happy to say we have an agreement to buy and develop a promising piece of land with a local partner in the future. More information to come, there is a lot of legal stuff in the background first.
Today I am soft-announcing that this will not be @ecobanker's first project, that another potential project has come to our attention, and even before expressing it to my crypto pals, interest has been expressed.
Let's start at the beginning:
One of the oldest and most important raw materials in the world in wood. Wood is very useful, it has many great properties. It is made of carbon that used to be in the air, so if you don't like carbon in the air you should really like growing wood!
In Colombia, in order to get a license to cut and transport wood, the timber must be certified as an agricultural crop. right now it is very hard to get 'legal wood' where we live, as most of the wood is illegally 'found' and harvested tree by tree, not in giant lots.
But the giant lots do exist - just need a little cash to get started.
While my wife @ecoinstante is working on a reforestation project with over 60 native species of trees to protect two critically endangered endemic bird species, there is still a great demand for wood as a material. The prices are rising, although this may just be because of the funny paper monies we are playing with.
The higher demand for wood, the more people will be motivated to make timber plantations, either alone or along with their other crops. This is a good thing.
Proposal - Lease a tract of ready to cut lumber.
Here are the basic steps -
- Lease the tract - the one we are looking at has 7000 trees: 6000 pino patula and 1000 cypress trees. We will need to take a forestry engineer to sample the lot and confirm this count and their diameters.
- Hire sawmen and a mule team.
- Hire a truck.
- Profit.
The saw men cut the trees into tablones, large 3 inch thick pieces as wide as they can get them. The edges and scraps all are used and sold for a lesser price. The mule team carries the cut wood to the truck, and the truck delivers the wood to ready clients.
One of those clients will be me. I would like to dry and treat wood, many people in my small town have already been asking me about how much I will be charging for well dried and immunized boards.
How much money??
I am still finalizing all the information, but it looks like we need 10,000 USD. I am willing and able to put up 2k usd, which leaves us with a funding round looking for 8 thousand us dollars.
The reason that this amount is relatively small, is that we will immediately be able to start selling the wood, as there is a shortage, confirmed in our region, of legal, certified agricultural timber.
The cost breakdown looks good, and as long as the forestry engineer can confirm our count and diameter estimates, and we can sell all the wood, we are looking at a conservative 3x gain possible - at yesterday's lumber prices.
What really has me excited about this deal, is that prices are going up. If we can get this deal set up for January, and sell the wood from February to June/July, I strongly suspect the price of lumber will be going up, up and up during that period, if only because the paper money is becoming worthless. This should increase our multiplier, measured in usd.
What I want to know right now is specifically who is interested, and how much for. Feel free to ping me on discord, I'm frequently in the BROFUND ManCave or ARCHON/UpFundMe discords.
If you are only academically interested in seeing other people invest, then just leave comment here with your support or suggestions!