Our long time friend Dave Deppner always has an interesting story to tell whenever he comes to the Philippines and gives us a visit. Dave was a former Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines, got a wife from Pangasinan, and then put up Trees for the Future, an NGO which is promoting planting of trees, both forest and not forest, for sustainable agriculture development in no less than 65 countries now.

When we met him last week, he was excited to tell us about the very successful tree planting scheme in Ethiopia. In 2005, he sold the idea to the Ethiopian Airlines that the company sponsor a tree planting project in that country.

He proposed that his organization will do the planting for the company. Under the scheme, Ethiopian Airlines sponsors the planting of one tree for every passenger it carries at a cost of only 10 US cents per tree. The airline was also excited about the novel idea and since then has been supporting the project. According to Dave, no less than 7.5 million trees have been planted so far under the project.

Under the program, they plant a wide range of trees. The only tree they don’t plant is eucalyptus which Dave says is bad for the environment. It depletes the soil moisture and kills other vegetation around. They plant trees that are sources of food, fuel wood, livestock feed, organic fertilizer and construction material.

He says that they are also planting a lot of malunggay in Ethiopia. They have a variety with short pods but bigger leaves than those in the Philippines.

Globally, Trees for the Future has planted so far no less than 90 million trees in 65 countries in the last 20 years.