[Stoves] Report on?APBC - first two days

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Kobus

It is nice to find someone with personal experience!

>Someone whose name has escaped me actually burned the flammable material
inter-row as part of pre fire season preparations - and everyone thought he
was mad - but he did prevent ground fire risk - and he was kept busy for
many years. 

Have you seen the charcoal makers working forests along the road between
Mbabane and Ermelo? They only pull out fire damaged trees most of the time.
The thing is, the forest management has all the waste from harvesting (about
1/2 the tree mass) raked into rows and burned. They could just as easily
turn it into char on a huge scale and sell it for some price or other.

If char has beneficial effects it would go to nearby farmers. If not it
could enter the briquetting stream as fines (which are worth about R800 a
ton though I didn't check recently).

There is just a huge amount of fuel there which seems to go up in smoke even
if there are no forest fires.

It could be supplied to at least some of the coal burning towns between
there and Witbank.

Regards
Crispin