Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Dexter Dombro with Acacia mangium
I am starting this blog to tell people about the low risk - high return opportunities offered by tropical trees. Despite the name, this blog is about more than financial investing. The way I see it, any time you fund the planting of tropical trees you are having a positive impact on the planet. Besides making money, tropical trees sequester carbon dioxide (CO2), provide employment to people in developing countries, feed and provide habitat to endangered wildlife, absorb pollutants, produce oxygen, are the source of numerous natural medicines and remedies, fix nitrogen in the soil, stop erosion, hold ground water and lift the spirits of humans on a planet with more and more people living on it all the time. The list continues, and it is my hope that I will be able to address all of these issues in the coming months.

Dexter Dombro with Eucalyptus pellita
First I guess in would be in order to introduce myself. My name is Dexter Dombro. I am a lawyer who had an epiphany one day and decided to do something useful with his life. I quit the law and started to work on affordable low cost housing for low income working families in Central America. This led to a fortuitous meeting with some folks in Colombia who wanted me to see some areas in the eastern plains of Colombia (the llano oriental or Orinoquía) that were ideal for afforestation and reforestation projects. I agreed and the next thing I new my wife and I became the owner operators of a tropical tree farm in the Departamento of Vichada, in Colombia. The tree farm is located along the banks of the Rio el Bita, which flows into the mighty Orinoco River, not far from the river port city of Puerto Carreño.

So everything I am going to talk about in this blog is based on first hand experience, a little bit of knowledge and a lot of passion. Perhaps the most exciting aspect, for some people, is the fact that tropical trees as an investment have consistently outperformed the world's stock markets since before the 1940's. This shouldn't really surprise anyone, because there are less and less forests available to logging companies and more and more people on the planet wanting wood products, for construction, furniture, pulp and paper, cooking fuel, natural remedies, arts and crafts, toothpicks and satay sticks and a zillion other uses. The bottom line is that demand exceeds supply, and is likely to continue to do so. I hope you will therefore enjoy my musings about investing, the science of tropical trees, life in Colombia, and the importance of creating habitat for endangered wildlife.

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