… there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong.
Any time there is a discussion about forests, someone brings up the possibility of substituting hemp for paper and for petroleum products. I read on one discussion forum,
“[Industrial hemp] can be harvested every four months while traditional varieties of trees are allowed to grow to maturity, preserving forest ecosystems.”
Help me out here. In what way is a monoculture that needs fertilizers and pesticides better than a tree plantation? Plantations have no/low fertilizer need and no/low pesticide use. No agricultural crop can claim to be as environmentally friendly as a plantation of trees. Even though plantations may be less complex than ‘wild’ stands, tree plantations contain more biodiversity than any agricultural crop.
Hemp needs choice land, more water, more fertilizer, more pesticide.
[Hemp] does best on loose, well-drained loam soils with high fertility and abundant organic matter. Plants require plentiful moisture throughout the growing season … [and] substantial amounts of available nutrients to produce high yields … numerous fertilization studies [etc.] conclude that hemp requires liberal fertilization for high fiber yields. Source: US Dept of Agriculture report, Industrial Hemp in the United States: Status and Market Potential
And every four months is so optimistic as to border on ludicrous. Try a four-year rotation to prevent soil depletion:
A three-year, but preferably a four-year rotation, such as cereals, clover for green manure, corn, hemp and then back to cereals is recommended to help maintain soil fertility.” Source: Government of Canada; Agriculture Canada: Report on Hemp, Bi-Weekly Bulletin, December 16, 1994 Vol. 7 No. 23, by Gordon Reichert.
And the reason the Canadian report recommends a fear-year rotation for hemp? Hemp rapidly depletes the soil of nutrients.
[Hemp] extracts more nutrients per hectare than grain crops, removing about two to three times as much nitrogen, three to six times as much phosphorus, and ten to twenty-two times as much potassium per hectare, owing to fast biomass production.
Lastly, since land will be needed in either case, wouldn’t trees be the more environmentally agreeable choice?
Nullius in Verba 
A managed agricultural crop wouldn’t provide such a good habitat for wildlife either. Or soak up so much precipitation to reduce flood run off. There are no simple solutions and a holistic view is always required.
The hardest thing though, is that we don’t really need to be looking for alternatives; we need to be reducing our use of paper and petrochemicals – doing everything we can to live more sustainable lives. Technology alone won’t save us. A little bit of ‘back to basics’ might just help.
K
I agree and you reinforce the point I tried to make. Agricultural crops tend to discourage wildlife. The blandest tree plantation holds magnitudes more wildlife than any ag crop.