Seeing a market through the trees

SleepyEyeNews.com
Sleepy Eye Herald-Dispatch
Posted Apr 22, 2010 @ 11:56 AM

Hanska, Minn. — Curt Kreklau isn’t out of the woods yet. And if things go right, he’ll only get deeper into them. Kreklau is growing thousands of trees on his farm near Sebeka with an eye toward the biofuel market. He is growing hybrid poplars, red oak, several types of pine, and even some native prairie grasses for bioenergy and more traditional uses.

In the late 1990s it was getting harder to rent out land. Kreklau wanted to keep drawing income from the property even when the time came when he would have no renters.

“I thought this would be a better choice — to put it in trees,” he explained. Though at first Kreklau admits having reservations. There are a number of benefits to putting land into trees. For example, trees are low-maintenance and after the first couple of years inputs are small if there’s no insect problem. The trees also come back from the stump, “so the second crop is already seeded, so labor is saved,” Kreklau added. “It’s good for an absentee land owner.”

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