Replies to post #2120 on Investing in Timber

[jschwarzbart]

Belmont, Marc's post is about the likelihood of retaliation. I'm not disagreeing with your points, but I don't think you are addressing the issue of retaliation.

[David Knight]

belmontx, you fail to understand your legal relationship to TATF. Have you even read the contract you signed with them when you bought your trees? If so, there's little indication from your many posts that you remember or understand any of it.

First of all, tree owners are not share-holders. None of us holds any ownership interest in TATF, rather we have only and exclusively the ownership of the specific trees being grown for each of us. In other words, we have a contractual relationship with TATF, not an equity relationship. TATF is a privately owned business and as such has no obligation to report its financial statements publicly.

You and others can have all the feelings and beliefs you want about Steve, but none of them change the terms of the contracts you signed, i.e., the obligations TATF has to each of us.

As I've written before, and as you've ignored before, everything begins and ends with the contract you signed. Why insist on focusing on legally irrelevant issues? What do you hope to accomplish?

An explanation is not the same as an excuse. It's been explained many times, so there's little reason to believe you will understand yet another explanation. For the benefit of anyone willing to think, however, there are several factors that, especially in combination, clearly would have an impact on TATF's current cash flow situation. Things like a collapse in the world economy, collapse in construction (major teak users), inaccurate initial estimate of the value of young teak (a profoundly fundamental factor of the business plan and one which continues to impact many aspects of the business, but especially the cash flow during the early harvests), and some of the critical comments in this forum (particularly those that deny fundamental aspects of TATF, like that it doesn't exist except as a marketing front or that only a few show trees exist).

I find this particular point of yours to be most interesting: you say the negative posts here have no adverse effect of TATF's ability to conduct its business, yet you believe (why else would you spend so much of your time here) that making negative posts here will have an effect. How can the negative posts here both have an effect and not have an effect? It's a logical impossibility. Either the posts have an effect or they don't. If they don't, why continue making them? If they do, then you've disproved your own excuse.

Try being practical. Answer a simple question: if the value of young teak in the current Costa Rican open market is near zero, how will selling it there provide significant distributions to tree owners, or provide significant capital to TATF? How will it cover the costs of cutting, milling, drying, and transporting it, as well as the cumulative care and maintenance costs of the trees? Or do you believe that young teak in the Costa Rican market really does have significant value now, and Steve is just holding it off the market because he wants to screw with you?

You fail to put yourself in TATF's position as a business. It should be pretty obvious that things aren't going as they had expected at this time. There are a number of reasons for that. (That's REASONS, not EXCUSES.) But the truth is, our unthinned trees are still growing. Bigger trees will produce more product to be eventually sold. The market for adult teak is better than the market for young teak. The market for all teak, and teak and other tropical hardwood products, can very reasonably be expected to be better after the current world wide economic downturn has ended. It appears that TATF has little debt, which means it should be able to withstand the current poor market for its products while waiting for the economy to improve and for our trees to attain the age and size where they have significant value in the open market. Those are the facts and beliefs that I hold, and why my strategy is more than one of mere hope or excuse. I do not want to do anything that harms TATF's current and future ability to conduct its business given the realities of the current environment. I have seen the enemy, and it is us.

[Jan Veenstra]

For Belmont and DupedBySteve, a story on spoiled milk

This is an old story of a milk man who sold milk from his own cows. In the morning he would get up early and milk his cows and then go from home to home to sell his milk. He didn't make a lot of money, but enough to keep the family going. One day the local grocer started selling bottled milk. He had a hard time selling, because people were used to the fresh milk and liked the milk man. Then suddenly, a rumor appeared; some one had seen the milkman urinate in the milk can. Within a week he could no longer sell any milk, was unable to take care of his family and forced to sell his cows. The bad thing was though, that these were only rumors, nobody had actually seen him urinate into the milk, but everybody believed it. This is the power of malicious rumormongers. Talking about things one hasn't seen, but since nobody else has seen the contrary either, people just don't take the risk of buying any more milk and the milk man is out of a job.

Look Belmont and DupedBySteve, if you have any milk that you think is spoiled, we might be willing to buy it. In other words, sell your trees, offer them for sale. I do not appreciate you telling stories here anonymously, that we are unable to verify. To continue with the milk man analogy, if he goes out of business, there is little likelihood I will get any of the money I invested in the farm back, so you are also hurting me. If you have a problem with Steve, that is between you and Steve, but I don't see why you want to hurt me, or the other tree owners on this board. It escapes me entirely.