TREES TOP 60-FOOT MARK

Harvesting mature Eastern Cottonwoods will start next year or in early 2002 in Southeast Missouri.

"We'll start harvesting after the sixth growing season for the cottonwoods," said Terry Long, manager of the Westvaco Fiber Farm, along Missouri's Route 77 in Scott County.

At that time, cottonwoods, started as 2-inch stubs above ground six years ago, will be 70 to 85 feet tall.

Three factors are credited for the extreme fast growth of the cottonwood trees:

* Cottonwoods are fast-growing trees.

* A very sandy soil.

* Fertigation.

The cottonwoods will be cultivated specifically for the Westvaco's fine-paper mill at Wickliffe on the Kentucky side of the Mississippi River just south of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

The Southeast Missouri fiber farm originated more than five years ago. The Robbins Fiber Farm, named after the farm's previous owner, started as a 240-acre operation, within easy trucking distance to the Wickliffe mill.

"The first field of cottonwoods are in the middle of their fifth growing season and are reaching heights of sixty to sixty-five feet and four to seven inches in diameter," said Long. "Our newest field was planted in March of this year."

The trees start as an 18-inch "stick," buried l6 inches in the ground "to allow the roots system to start," said Long. The latest field, after about four months, has trees of three to four feet, and within the next five months will reach heights of 10 to 12 feet."

A nearby field of 3-year-old cottonwoods are in the 30- to 35-foot range. Westvaco's goal was to establish a six-year harvest rotation of cottonwood, said John Wood, a public affairs officer with Westvaco Timberlands Divisions .

"We're doing that," said Wood. "We've added additional acreage here over the past few years. We have a total of 1,300 acres, with 760 acres under the Fertigation program."

Included in the program is a nursery at the Robbins Fiber Farm site and various research plots throughout the 1,300 acres.

The Fertigation program provides for the maximum growth of the trees, according to Long and Wood.

Simply put: "Fertigation is the technique of supplying dissolved fertilizer to crops through an irrigation system," said Long, who oversees the computer monitoring of the farm's Fertigation system.

"Fiber farming is one of the fastest evolving efforts in wood-fiber self-sufficiency," said Wood.

The concept is borrowed from agriculture and is conducted similarly to farmers experimenting with tomatoes and citrus fruits.

Fertigation delivers precise amounts of water and fertilizer directly to the individual plant's root zone through drip tubing, tubing installed along each row of trees in the 80-acre tracts.

"The drip irrigation system by a fully automated controller is the backbone of the entire system," said Long. The controllers in pump houses are programmed to operate field valves, backwash valves, water pumps and fertilizer pumps.

Water for the drip irrigation system is delivered from wells near the pump houses. Drip lines -- small 3/4-inch hoses with holes -- are placed along the rows of trees.

A sandy soil is needed in the case of hardwood fiber farming, said Long.

"The sandy soil allows us to control the moisture and Fertigation," he said.

The sandy soils of Southeast Missouri was why the farm was started in Scott County.

"Everything was here," said Wood. "The system will provide us with more wood in a fourth of the time."

The research portion of the fiber farm is designed to find the optimum condition for growing trees using Fertigation.

The ongoing studies provide data to determine the best combination of water and fertilizers and compare cottonwood "clones" to evaluate which respond best to Fertigation, and evaluate different herbicide applications in a fiber farm setting.

"Fertigation is definitely working," said Long.

Westvaco, headquartered in New York, has facilities throughout the world and has adopted a number of programs to assure sustainability of American private forests in an environmentally sound fashion.

The company is developing thousands of acres of new forest lands in Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky.

Westvaco started its paper-making operations at Wickliffe in a $90 million plant in 1970 and invested more than $200 million there over the past seven years, including $125 million to install new facilities to enable the mill to produce high-quality coated paper. Also added was a $32 million wood yard. The carbon plant, an $80 million project, has been constructed at the Wickliffe paper mill and will use hardwood sawdust as its basic raw material.

Sawdust, a waste byproduct of the forest products industry, is usually burned or put into a solid-waste landfill, but, the new Wickliffe carbon plant will constructively use material from sawmills and other sources throughout the region.

"The use of activated carbon results in better air quality," said Wood. "When installed in canisters and used in automobile emission systems, the carbon absorbs gasoline vapors before they reach the atmosphere."

In addition to automotive emission control, applications for activated carbon include gas and vapor adoption, solvent recovery, sugar and syrup processing, pharmaceutical processing and water purification.

Westvaco is one of the largest producers of envelopes in the world, with envelope plants in Georgia, Texas, Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania,

Westvaco has 14 sales offices in Brazil, 28 in the United States and others in India, Belgium, China, Mexico, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Australia and Canada.

The company managed more than 1.5 million acres of timberlands in the United States and Brazil. Westvaco has four corrugated box plants in Brazil.

Westvaco reported sales at more than $5.8 billion over the past two years, including $2.8 billion last year, down from the $3 billion of 1998.

WHAT IS VERTIGATION

"Fertigation," a technique of supplying dissolved fertilizer to crops through an irrigation system," works in the cottonwood fields of Scott County.

Harvesting trees for Westvaco fine paper mill of Wickliffe, Ky., will get under way within 18 months. The Southeast Missouri fiber farm has 1,300 acres, with more than half of those acres in cottonwood production.