Hawaiian Legacy Hardwoods is mounting an intriguing new project to use RFID to track the growth and sale of its heirloom Koa trees and lumber. The project is designed to allow investors in the company to track the growth of their investment.
An RFID tag will be attached to “each tree to track ownership, growth, maintenance and the lumber yield from each tree owner’s stand,” according to the company.
“(HLH’s) GPS / GIS system will locate each tree by an exact set of geographic coordinates allowing the tree owner to locate their trees on maps and by satellite imagery. It is only a matter of time before you will be able to go on line and use these coordinate to look at your specific trees from space.”
In other words, you can watch your trees mature via Google Earth.
The company planted the first 140-acre section with Koa trees in 2009. In the coming half a decade, the plantation will fill the entirety of a 2700-acre site on Hawaii Island’s Hamakua coast on the big island of Hawaii. This site was once the personal royal forest of King Kamehameha I. It will eventually support the growth of 1.3 million tropical hardwoods, primarily Koa, indigenous only to Hawaii.
The business set-up is designed to allow different sized investors. The product is sold, on the hoof as it were, in units of 100 trees.