[{"_1":2,"_37":-5,"_38":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4},"routes/collections.videos.$video",{"_5":6},"video",{"_7":8,"_9":10,"_11":12,"_13":14,"_15":16,"_17":18,"_19":-5,"_20":21,"_22":23,"_24":25,"_26":27,"_28":29,"_30":-5,"_31":32,"_33":34,"_35":-5,"_36":5},"model_id",5,"suppress","no","name","William Boyd on the emergence of the pulp and paper industry and the logic of cultivation","category","Interview","embed_id","1078387797","provider","Vimeo","description","place_names",[],"places",[],"uuid","4332439b-528e-4eb0-ab59-a361d38668a7","slug","william-boyd-on-the-emergence-of-the-pulp-and-paper-industry-and-the-logic-of-cultivation","transcript","

Most of the virgin timber in the South was cut by the 1920s or so. And so there was an assault on the southern forest, if you will, by the lumber and naval stores industries in this sort of half century after Reconstruction. And by the 1920s, the industry was sort of cutting out and heading on out to the Northwest.

So in Georgia, for example, I think in 1920, the total amount of old growth forest in Georgia and the Coastal Plain in particular had been reduced from something like 18 million acres to about 700,000 acres. And then by 1927, it had declined to about 300,000 acres. So there really was very little virgin timber left in the South by the 1930s or so.

And the pulp and paper industry moves in and recognizes that the Southern forest is starting to regenerate naturally but also recognizes that they really need to engage in sort of an intensive effort to regenerate the Southern forest and to improve the biological productivity, to use genetics and tree improvement, to get trees to grow faster and better. And timber becomes a crop, essentially.

And so the big transition from the lumber and naval stores industry to the pulp and paper industry is really a transition from a logic of extraction, where the forest is treated as mine and essentially is being cut down rapidly with no real sort of concern about regrowth or anything like that, to a logic of cultivation where pine trees are seen as an intensively managed monoculture.

It would be difficult, I think, for anybody to argue that pine monoculture is a sort of natural forest. There are obviously benefits to the land and having it forested in that sense, right? But these are highly managed ecosystems, if you will, that don't have the diversity that these natural forests once had.

","publisher","thumbnail_url","https://vumbnail.com/1078387797.jpg","embed_url","https://player.vimeo.com/video/1078387797","location","media_type","actionData","errors"]

William Boyd on the emergence of the pulp and paper industry and the logic of cultivation

Transcript