[b1gnasty]

I spent years working in the forestry industry in Canada planting trees. The first picture says a lot in respect to why the process might be going slowly for them. It is an athletic endeavour that takes efficient tools and the mindset to endure a lot of suffering. It says they are planting 3 million trees a year; that is a tiny amount. I've worked with many planters who have planted over a million trees themselves. Here's a link to a picture of what an effective treeplanter looks like: https://i0.wp.com/hardcoretreeplanters.com/wp/wp-content/upl...

[avar]

I worked (among other things) in tree planting as a teenager in Iceland. We weren't doing it very efficiently, but one reason we didn't have these huge bags is because generally your crew is planting this on land that has no existing trees, so you can just drive a pick-up truck alongside the crew.

Which looking at this Canadian video of the forestry service might explain the difference, i.e. if you're planting in an existing forest it makes more sense to carry everything with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkjeC1rxRt0

[gardarh]

I spent two summers planting for the Icelandic forrest service and I imagine that is more or less how I and my coworkers looked like (well, somewhat less feminine I suppose). You shouldn't extrapolate too much from the newspaper picture.

[CanSpice]

If you haven't read it already, you may be interested in Eating Dirt, a book about planting trees in BC: http://charlottegill.com/?page_id=10

[b1gnasty]

Yep, I have read it and I have lived that life. A fairly accurate portrayal. I have many, many stories from those years that will be fun to entertain the grandkids with.

[red75prime]

I expected tree-planting tractor. Is it hard to automate?

[xexers]

Agreed. In wide open fields, tree planting tractors should work.

I have personally planted evergreen trees using a machine that was meant for strawberry planting pulled behind a tractor. It's super easy, you sit on a chair and feed the machine the trees like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKKi4Ja97JQ