Seed-firing drones are planting 40k trees every day to fight deforestation | Hacker News Reader

Seed-firing drones are planting 40k trees every day to fight deforestation

euronews.com

189 pointsashitlerferad131 comments

I very much doubt many of these seeds will be successful.

They say that it's more efficient to use a drone than to manually plant a tree or seed. Yes, blasting seeds out of a potato cannon would also be much more efficient if the goal is to spread unsuccessful seeds. If the goal is to get to a mature tree or forest, then I doubt it's more efficient at all.

Forrests are self-sustaining. But recreating a clear-cut forrest usually requires a bit more care than just chucking seeds around.

Yeah, I also doubt their claims. Spreading seeds from the air you're basically spreading bird food.

Successful trees need the seeds to be planted under the earth.

Lockheed Martin had a plan to make baby tree missiles to be dropped from the sky [1] and they'll embed themselves nicely into the earth thanks to the terminal velocity energy.

Trouble is, they'll also probably kill all animals in the forest they happen to impale on their way down.

[1] https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/1467/Planes-Can-Plant-1-Billi...

> Trouble is they'll also probably kill all animals in the forest they happen to impale on their way down.

Is this actually that big of a deal? Unless they're literally carpet-bombing the place I'd expect the collateral damage to be minimal.

I guess you can also adjust the schedule of the operation at times where the most common animals in the target area aren't active and are unlikely to be out in the line of fire.

First you need to send a sound-wave bomb to scare the animals on the ground, and then you know what's going to happen.

It's dropping dirt-bullets out of the sky with enough momentum to penetrate dirt -- probably enough to penetrate most flesh.

Air-dropping pinecones and seeds, however, might be sufficient (and very fast). Cones and seeds are already designed to fall at/near terminal velocity and later on yield a tree.

It'd definitely make me smile to see a Hercules flying across recently-logged terrain or historically-deforested offloading tons of seeds that drift to the ground to start a new life.

True - my point wasn’t to imply that you’ll have no animal casualties at all, but that unless you’re literally dropping one shell per square meter, the casualty rate would be acceptable.

What if people happen to be wondering there during the tree bombing campaign?

I doubt human casualties or even injuries are acceptable.

Why would you some crazy aerial methods in locations where humans can casually stroll? The entire point here is to do it in unreachable places.

When it comes to human casualties, “unreachable places” probably won’t cut it. You’ll need to be 100% sure there are no humans in there at all, short of maybe uncontacted/unknown hominid species.

A potential solution would be to announce the operation months/years in advance and actively prohibit access to the areas during that time.

> Spreading seeds from the air you're basically spreading bird food.

Aerial seeding is an established practice with quite a history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_seeding

https://www.deseret.com/2000/10/28/19536330/forest-service-i...

To quote: "Using a helicopter to broadcast native plant seeds, conservation officials of Wasatch-Cache National Forest have begun to rehabilitate parts of the Stansbury Mountains burned in last summer's wildfires."

This is an article from 2000.

It is very widely used to re-seed remote locations which would be hard or hazardous to approach on foot.

It doesn’t work for trees. Grasses, yes.

Why doesn't it work for trees? I can't stop trees from growing in my yard from seeds blowing in, I genuinely don't understand why just spreading seeds aerially isn't effective

Partly, it's a matter of volume. You're getting more wayward seeds spread on your lawn by a couple orders of magnitude, than what a drones will be sprinkling in coconut coir pucks or compacted dirt balls.

> Spreading seeds from the air you're basically spreading bird food.

How do seeds arrive on the ground from trees, naturally?

My yard currently has a bunch of maple tree seedlings sprouting up. At first I didn't know what they were and it took a lot of googling "what kind of weed is this" to find out. Since maple trees aren't usually considered "weeds," it took a while to identify these plants.

Anyway, there's a lot of them. At first I was hand pulling them, but after I identified them I realized I could probably just mow them and, once they've had their sprouting leaves chopped off, they'll just starve.

But the relevant point of my story is that I learned that: a) apparently (some) trees really do just disperse ridiculous amounts of seedlings, many of which do germinate and at least begin to grow. b) since I've never seen Maple trees growing in dense thickets like bamboo, I'm assuming that the vast majority of seedlings die off (and in fact a lot of the seedlings are sprouting in clearly terrible conditions that won't make sense once they're just a tiny bit larger -- in shallow soil, in deep shade, etc).

I'm a bit less skeptical that drone-based seeding would work thanks to this, though have no opinion on if that's an improvement over humans doing the seeding in terms of success and efficiency.

I remember reading that some trees purposely create non viable seeds in great numbers. The theory is it makes it energy inefficient for animals to sort through the chaff searching for viable seeds to eat.

One princess tree (also called empress tree) will drop tens or hundreds of thousands of seeds every year, of which most usually zero will grow into a new tree.

These trees are valued for furniture in Asia, but are invasive pests elsewhere, yet are still promoted by plant nurseries.

By spreading bird feed.

Many species of both animals & plants use the "spray and pray" mechanism of reproduction. Create enough gametes and by sheer numbers, some of them will eventually turn into adults.

That doesn't mean this approach will be successful for artificial reforestation. The numbers are fairly different for ensuring that the total number of seeds cast off by a maple or pine tree over its lifetime results in one successor tree, vs. trying to recreate a clear-cut forest from seed stocks delivered by drone.

"By spreading bird feed."

Wot? have you not seen a Sycamore?

You mean in the ground? Squirrels:

https://blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org/allin/2017/11/12/f...

Birds and other animals.

Excellent point!

>Spreading seeds from the air you're basically spreading bird food.

That is traditionally how seeds spread...

At four or five orders of magnitude more than what a fleet of drones can manage.

Well... you need trees to spread more trees. But if you've got no trees to start with, then you need drones.

> Spreading seeds from the air you're basically spreading bird food. Successful trees need the seeds to be planted under the earth.

Basically all tree seeds are spread by air, except perhaps ones that travel though an animal and get "planted" in droppings. Trees don't usually have seed drills.

To be fair, the germination rate of the average tree seed is probably in the millionths, which is why they make so many.

Trouble is, they'll also probably kill all animals in the forest they happen to impale on their way down.

Those numbers would be very small. The percentage of the area of a forest that has the body of an animal directly above it is quite low.

> Spreading seeds from the air you're basically spreading bird food.

"These pods are manufactured using waste biomass, providing a carbon rich coating that protects the seeds from birds, insects and rodents."

They're not dropping them, they're shooting them into the ground and you can see them embed in their video.

If you looked into it, you'd see it's not just "spreading bird food".

animals are actually very likely to spread seeds further when they poop

I mean, they at least claim that solving this problem constitutes the actual secret sauce of their project:

> "The niche really lies in our biotech, which is the support system for the seed once it's on the ground," says Walker.

“It protects the seed from different types of wildlife, but also supports the seed once it germinates and really helps deliver all of those nutrients and mineral sources that it needs, along with some probiotics to really boost early-stage growth."

No idea how credible this is of course.

It’s not credible. I know people that work at this kind of company. None of the countermeasures have been successful and the germination rate is less than 1%.

I don't know what the germination rate is when you plant the seeds by hand, but it seems that aerial seeding requires 1.5 to 2 times more seeds. https://efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/references/public/IL/Agronomy...

This does not seem excessive in regards of the time it saves.

Cover crops aren't trees. To elaborate...

Cover crop seeds (basically grasses) and tree seeds are apples and oranges. You can spray grass seed on the surface of the dirt and it will grow into a meadow. The same can not be said for trees. They will be eaten by birds and mice and digested, not dispersed. They also don't germinate well when left on the surface of the soil.

It's also a matter of numbers - tree seeds are by comparison, incredibly expensive to harvest. There's an industry of people who will camp out in forests, stalk squirrels, and see where they're storing their nuts. Or they climb trees to manually harvest fresh pinecones. It's labor intensive and you need a permit to do it.

> There's an industry of people who will camp out in forests, stalk squirrels, and see where they're storing their nuts. Or they climb trees to manually harvest fresh pinecones. It's labor intensive and you need a permit to do it.

Given we don't have squirrels in Australia, I'd imagine the knowledge you're providing here around gathering and permits are not accurate to the company in discussion.

What if a drone were to shoot the seeds into the ground with such force that they would be buried 4-5 inches deep (which is, I would guess, the necessary depth for successful propagation)?

That's probably too deep for most plants. 1-2 inches is probably more realistic, with 2 being close to the max.

what does this mean?

I've added more context to the comment

You dont plant tree seeds by hand. You plant saplings, small trees well past germination.

Well presumably someone is planting the seeds for the saplings unless they are all clones.

That's called a tree nursery. Seeds are planted and germinated in controlled conditions on a few acres.

Once they're baby trees, then you go plant them by hand in areas that need reforestation.

It's more like 1 in 3, an order of magnitude better. And they'd be sown under cover in more controlled conditions before planting out; not just tossed in the ground.

Can you site any sources supporting your claim?

No, this is hearsay, and I'm only passing on information I've heard from people that work at companies in this space and in silviculture (lots of companies are trying to crack the "plant trees with drones" nut).

They claim 80% germination rate at this company.

400 trees a day planted by drones seems ok. That’s 146,000 per year. Per drone. Seems ok to me.

Where did you see anything about a drone planting 400 trees a day? This would truly be remarkable if it existed.

40k/day Ad * 1% success rate criticism = 400 trees/day. So the criticism is a claim it is remarkable?

Except these drones are not planting trees is my hang up on the comment.

These drones are randomly throwing out seeds. The 1% is a seed germination rate. A germinated seed does not equate to a tree being planted.

I think a sapling planter plants more than their salary in saplings, so a comparison to the human sapling planter is false equivalence. I also don't see the difficulty in waiting until a seed has germinated in a nutrition disc before releasing it if you want to focus on getting 80% germination.

Regardless of what choices are made it seems likely to me that someone's automation in this area is already capable of doing about as well as careful management in some places with high labor costs. From equality, an automated system can easily double it's yield every few years while a managed system is going to be lucky with 20% improvement?

Really improving seed performance and dispersion by orders of magnitude from natural with automation never has to get anywhere near as good as a manual system of trying to raise every tree.

Even 0.5% of 40000 seeds is 200 trees per day.

That's nothing, and in addition to that, it's a huge waste of seeds (these companies are buying up all the available seed for certain species of trees, which means net fewer trees planted). Manually planting already germinated baby trees is more efficient both in terms of hours and labor spent and has a higher germination rate.

200 trees is about how many an experienced treeplanter will plant before thier first coffee break.

Yes but do they use AI and machine learning? Do they hover in place and look cool? They don’t even have a cool name like “drone.” I guess you probably also can’t mass produce and automate experienced tree planters too. While they’re swilling coffee they could be launching hundreds or even thousands of AI powered drones shooting fancy seed pods everywhere. You can’t stop progress John Henry.

Depending on the seed that might be enough. The same way just adding another machine to a cloud might be more economic than employing 2 engineers for a year in order to make a system more efficient.

A coffee bean weights 132.5 milligrams. 40k of those is ~5.3 kgs of beans. Sure it would be inefficient to employ all of those beans if only 200 of them end up being viable. But if those "wasted" 5 kg beans saves labour, then it might make economical sense. And if the alternative is running some sort of heavier planter machine, it might end up producing less emissions.

For the record I have not done real numbers here and my gut instinct is that the drone thing is a gimmick. I'm just trying to keep an open mind.

I don't think emissions should be a concern at all for a reforestation project, unless orders of magnitude more waste is emitted compared to that absorbed by a tree over, say, 10-20 years. Forests pay long term dividends beyond carbon capture.

I don’t know about a forest, but seed bombing is something that guerrilla gardners have used to reintroduce native plants back into blighted urban areas.

Reforestation projects that I have heard work well, works with ecological succession. Once clear cut, if grass gets into there, then that’s more difficult because soil ecology has changed to favor grasses.

But dumping a bunch of mulch will favor forest soil and favorable conditions for a forest. Mulch from cut trees usually go to the landfill, with arborists having to pay for it.

More fundamental ways are changing the way water flows through a system. Water just needs to be slowed down enough to accumulate organic materials. This video is about how the Arizona canal inadvertently created a water-harvesting structure that kicked off native wild growth along the bearm: https://youtu.be/jf8usAesJvo

I’ve read where they study reforestation and it’s a whole process where ‘pioneer species’ pave the way to ‘proper’ forest plants.

Probably read about it in the Humbolt State Alumni magazine since they clear-cut the hell out of the redwoods in the ‘80s and HSU has* a really good forestry department that studies these sorts of things.

* had? They’re now a ‘polytechnic’ so don’t know what to call them anymore — Cal Poly Humboldt maybe?

A company I've done work for has an 80 percent germination rate by shooting seedballs into the dirt.

They later return to the site via GPS data to monitor and verify their success.

https://dronedj.com/2022/01/07/airseed-technologies-works-to...

Have you researched at all or are you just dismissing the entirety of their work? Did you know they plan for an efficacy rate and over-seed? There's no downside. They've thought about all of this before.

Have you researched at all or are you just assuming the entirety of their claims? Did you know they lie about their efficacy rate? There's no upside. They've thought about nothing but how to make money from carbon credits.

That's a bold claim. Care to elaborate how you came to this conclusion?

I spent 5 minutes researching. Hell, you could just get the information from other comments if you're too lazy to do that.

I think that's why the Seattle company Droneseed is focusing on more established saplings: https://droneseed.com/

> I very much doubt many of these seeds will be successful.

Isn't that the entire point of using a ton of seeds? It's cheap and you only need N of them to sprout, so you just try to plant as many as you need to reach N viable ones. Seems like a weird way to dismiss the approach.

Spray and pray. That is what plants are doing.

If there are chipmunks or squirrels the job is done on arrival. Those little guys are outrageously industrious at burying excess seeds and nuts, everywhere they can. I'll betcha order Rodentia is responsible for planting many times more trees than Primates. We should bioengineer them for our future teraforming jobs.

There are no chipmunks or squirrels in Australia.

Likewise I doubt it.

I had a friend who was doing tree planting during the summers back in the college days. They were planting tree saplings, and even then many did not survive. It’s a numbers game. However, this is a difficult and expensive solution.

If they can spread lots of seeds on the cheap and get results then more power to them!

It’s fine if they’re not, trees produce ridiculous numbers of seeds per individual and if only a few are successful nature will take care of the rest.

The problem is that monoculture forests aren’t actually all that great, better than nothing but not that great either.

To me it seems like if you only need a few to be successful then doing it manually will be just as effective (since you're doing it manually, your success rate will be much higher).

In either case, it doesn't bode well for this startup's claimed goal. I'm sure their bank account on the other hand will be fine though.

it's probably cheaper/easier to send drones with lots of seeds over miles of land rather than workers with a few seeds

Workers don't plant seeds, they plant seedlings (that are 2-4 years old, depending on species). You get a much higher survival rate that way. It's costly, but so far it's the most efficient way. Maybe drones will change that eventually, but I doubt it'll do it by firing seeds.

You can probably take a drone with a load of seeds much easier to remote areas than shipping large numbers of few year old trees.

Areas that are too remote aren't typically the ones that get deforested though - generally trees are removed either because they're valuable (and if you can bring trees out, you can bring seedlings in) or because the land is wanted (which usually means it's accessible).

It's neat technology, and I hope they succeed, I just worry it's a cheap way to say "we're planting thousands of trees" while doing very little of value.

How were the first forests made?

> How were the first forests made?

In a few minutes, you can find out by watching episode 3 of Life on Earth: The First Forests[1] from time index 20:41, linked here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2i44t3?start=1241

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0846516/

I volunteer with a local organization that plants native trees (mostly Oak varieties) in the area.

Over the years they have developed a pretty elaborate system for planting saplings to maximize their odds of taking root and maturing into grown trees.

The process involves digging the right sized hole, placing a fertilizer packet at the bottom, repacking the dirt around the plant, protecting the sapling from deer and rodents using a chicken wire fence and a tall translucent plastic tube that’s supported by a steel rebar driven into the dirt. Then building a small berm around to capture water and covering it with mulch. They claim these steps increase odds of survival to 95%+.

Point being that it might take more than shooting seeds into the ground to regrow a forest.

What happens to the tube and wire? Do these need to be cut away later to allow the tree to grow beyond a sapling?

Yup… once the tree is as tall as the tube (approx 1.2m high) the tube is removed.

I hate those plastic tubes. Nobody ever removes them and they just end up littering the countryside.

There's a wood near me where someone has collected them all into an enormous grotesque pile. Very creepy.

Interesting anecdote. Do you have photos?

(Bonus points for a photo with arrows that explain the parts.)

I guess they are this kind (and the article is about research on the practice being not-so-good for the environment as these tubes are not collected/recycled):

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/24/trees-sh...

Yes these are the ones. I'm sorry to hear they can go uncollected. In our case they are always collected and often reused. It helps that the trees are being planted in the local area (the hills surrounding Stanford University) and the crews regularly check on them.

Is it possible to make them using other material?

What about wood?! My father had a 0°C to 100°C thermometer for the lab, and it has a wood tube to store it. It's probably more expensive than the plastic one, but it's 100% biodegradable.

These tubes are translucent to let light in and help the sapling grow. The saplings are only 20cm tall and takes them a couple of years to outgrow the tube. They will also have to last at least that long.

Also, probably wood would be chewed by animals, so one would need something that is both translucent and not edible/liked by deers, boars, etc.

Like others doubting the claims, it's worth noting the thoughts by professor Forrest Fleischman about "Silicon Valley businesspeople who are entranced with the idea of tree planting as a climate solution": https://twitter.com/ForrestFleisch1/status/14440088233506037... (2021)

If you dig around on SER https://www.ser.org/ you can find documentation on previous failed restoration efforts - my understanding is these efforts really need an intersection of community involvement/stakeholdership and education.

To give some benefit to organizations trying this, airseed does have a FAQ if you scroll down a bit on https://airseedtech.com/what-we-do/ . Curious about their differentiator mentioned in the article:

""The niche really lies in our biotech, which is the support system for the seed once it's on the ground," says Walker.

Of topic, but the guy has an interestingly apt name given his job, until you look up the meaning of his surname. I believe Fleischman translates to butcher, so he's "Forrest Butcher", which makes it wholly inappropriate given his job!

It seems with the abundance of cheap money since 2008, Silicon Valley has become very good at just convincing investors to hand them money

https://youtu.be/UsvrkVU0Qpw?t=99

"What's extremely special about this seed pod is that is carries over a gram of carbon [...] putting it back into the ground."

After that statement, all credibility is lost.

Surely they’re just badly explaining that it has a bit of “potting soil” to give it a better chance to grow.

"Drones" "artificial intelligence" "start-up"

Sounds like a scheme to scam money out of government grants, bloated charities/aid agencies and/or VCs. I’m surprised blockchain isn’t (yet?) involved.

Is there any evidence that throwing seeds at the ground is the bottleneck in fighting deforestation as opposed to for example the lack of suitable land to plant these in where the trees would actually be viable?

As another commenter points out, if seed distribution is the only bottleneck in fighting deforestation then a potato cannon will work just as well and will probably come out cheaper (and more fun!), but then you wouldn't become CEO of a "tech for good", AI-drone startup.

I’d like to invite you to invest in my startup. We’ve got hundreds of strains of trees that will self plant millions of trees each year.

Wow, self planting trees, that's brilliant! Exponential growth!

It's a subscription model. You have to pay or we'll cut down all the trees we planted.

If the trees are self-planting do you have DRM or some other way to make sure you remain in the loop and guarantee some MRR?

I would unironically expect Monsanto to come out with something like this within the next decade.

Fast growing trees for claiming carbon credits, with a gene knockout requiring Monsanto produced fertiliser to provide a complete nutrient profile.

But do you have NFT to sell "your own tree" to people or not?

> The company has already planted more than 50,000 trees

That does sound a lot, but I am not sure how they can justify their expected rate:

> Each of our drones can plant over 40,000 seed pods per day

Their long term goal is in line with the second, not the first:

> and aims to plant a total of 100 million by the year 2024.

Well, they only need 3 drones then... 3 * 40k * 365 * 2.5 ~ 1e8

…assuming a 100% germination rate.

They aim to plant 100 million they make no claims to the efficacy of their project.

This article is full of hype though. The headline claims they ARE planting 40,000/day. The company only attests to 50k so far.

Even the company site has an FAQ where it asks "why seeds and not seedlings?" and doesn't give a good answer other than "we developed the technology for seeds" - they cite "transplant shock" and "increases soil carbon".

Also, who's their target audience? Governments? NGOs?

I was interested in how many of the trees they've found to be viable, but since they've only planted 50,000 and the drones plant 40,000 a day, they've only been working for 1.25 days so presumably they have no idea.

One of the ways the elites are generating carbon credits for pennies on the credit.

They’re calling them “carbon offsets” now, to avoid future legal issues.

In Australia (where this company is based), they are called carbon credits, or carbon credit units to be more accurate.

I don't know if it's elites who are doing it, but greenwashing is a serious concern. We are too trusting that people claiming to restore the environment are "good" and can therefore be trusted to take a truly effective approach, rather than merely playing a game to maximize profit like a typical capitalist.

"the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, launched last year after Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff read the paper on the recommendation of Al Gore, the former US vice-president. The Time magazine owner told everyone he could about the research: chief executives, friends and world leaders, even convincing climate sceptic Donald Trump to back the WEF initiative with a multibillion tree commitment."

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/01/ive-neve...

Planting trees the proper way isn't exactly costly in the first place (e.g. compared to the complete lifecycle cost of maintaining and many decades later eventually harvesting a tree - the planting is a trivial cost). It's a weird problem to tackle, well, since it isn't really a problem.

They probably read the article “planting a trillion trees would solve climate change”

Extremely strange to see this writeup with no mention at all of Droneseed, which has been doing this successfully for a few years now, engineered seed pods and all. I've written them up twice, if you're curious or skeptical about the one in TFA:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/26/that-night-a-forest-flew-d...

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/29/droneseeds-36m-a-round-mak...

hmm .. "drones fighting the war on deforestation" ..

what about Arbor Day ? seed science.. good soil conditions.. erosion control.. regenerative bio-dynamic ecosystomology ?

can the point-and-shoot gaming crowd please chime in on how we can blend the marketing message here, since perhaps we share some goals?

There's a big difference between tossing a seed on the ground and planting a tree.

Presumably these seeds are encased in a clay like substrate with nutrients, insecticides, capsaicin, mycology cultures, moisture retention, etc.

Pretty sure they aren't just dumping bags of seeds on the ground.

A popular seed firing drone you might have heard of before is the PineCone™ - it’s fully autonomous, and deploys during periods of disturbance to maximize effectiveness. I think it might do a better job than this.

Trees left to themselves will each fire off millions of seeds. The idea that humans know best than nature is why we get into the mess that we get into.

Trees have everything within them to spread themselves.

What's the key thing is people leaving the land alone, (e.g. industrialists, urban planners and farmers) and that's something that is very very hard to do. If we can leave the land alone for nature then we can start to do simple conservation efforts to give nature a helping hand. Drones aren't that.

Is the problem of deforestation an issue with seed distribution?

I once read an article where a flying stake was used as an airborne delivery mechanism to plant these very expensive and hard-to-procure tree seeds.

I do do believe that to be a useful delivery mechanism for that type of seeds.

This method effectively deals with going underground, securing constant moisture, and protection against birds and other critters.

Too bad that I haven’t seen any followup to that approach.

Technology would do little good if humans don't care about the local ecosystem at all. This repeats again and again and seems we won't learn. Having people living on the ground who are interested in long term local sustainability, not motivated to exploit the land, is usually the best option.

It’s all fun and games until the drone battery overheats and starts a forest fire.

Trees are detremental to grassland ecosystems and don't contribute enough to carbon sequestration (assuming that is the goal) as grasslands do.

This article is clickbait and lacking in real detail.

> The company has already planted more than 50,000 trees

They also say, "Each of our drones can plant over 40,000 seed pods per day“ - so putting these numbers together, does this mean they’ve so far done <2 days of work?

No, it means very few of the seed pods actual become viable trees.

My car can go 120 miles an hour. I've driven 180 miles, how long have I been driving? (You can't know, the rate that my car can drive is independent of how I've used it.)

This drone can plant 40k seeds in a day, that doesn't mean they've used it to plant 40k seeds in a day.

And firing seeds into the ground doesn't solve anything.

It 'solves' getting government grants and possibly VC money on the trope of saving the environment.

theres a fantastic study on over forestation and the effects on the climate model. generally mass disruption either way has significant impacts. Plant X get Y is a incredibly reductive model for conceptualizing forestation.

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