Imagine a barren stretch of land in the middle of New Zealand's North Island. Very little grows there. Farmers tried for decades and failed, since a mineral deficiency in the soil kept killing their cattle. To make the land productive, the government tried something unusual: it sent prisoners, and later thousands of unemployed men, to plant trees there. As Michael Roche, a historical geographer, explained in the study, ‘ The New Zealand timber economy, 1840–1935 ,’ this unusual experiment eventually produced Kaingaroa Forest, which is now the largest planted forest in New Zealand and the second largest in the Southern Hemisphere.
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