June 26, 1997
FUTURE U.S. WOOD SELF-SUFFICIENCY MAY DEPEND ON TREE PLANTATIONS
Writer: Robert Burns, (903) 834-6191; [email protected]
Source: Dr. Richard Fisher ([email protected])
EAST TEXAS -- We have used up God's wood in the United States, according to a Texas A&M University professor of forest science.
"Now we have to grow our own," said Dr. Richard Fisher, speaking at the 1997 East Texas Forestry Field Day.
Held recently at the Texas A&M University Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Overton, the field day drew more than 250 owners of East Texas forest lands.
Fisher, one of a panel of speakers that included university, industry and legislative experts, said that people's attitudes, both those of consumers who use wood and those involved in the forestry industry, have to change.
In the United States, we are for the most part "hunter- gatherers" when it comes to wood. We harvest what grows naturally. We don't think of trees as an agricultural crop, Fisher said.
If the United States is going to continue to be major wood producer of the world, or even produce enough wood to meet its own domestic demands, then both consumers and foresters are going to have to change the way they think about forests. Those in the forest industry are going to have to change the way they produce wood.
"The way we do this is through tree plantations," Fisher said.
Currently, the United States remains one the few major players in the world market for wood. Canada, Sweden, Finland, Brazil, Indonesia and New Zealand also belong to this club.
In 1995 Canada led in exports with $16 billion ($30 billion production), the United States followed with $12.4 billion in exports and $97 billion in production, then came Sweden $9.9 billion exports and $10.2 billion production, Finland $8.2 billion exports and $9 billion production. Trailing these major exporters were Brazil with exports of $1.5 billion and production of $16 billion; Indonesia, $1.2 billion exports and $11 billion production; and New Zealand with $900 million exports and $1.1 billion production.
However, these last three countries are growing rapidly and within a decade will become the major wood producers of the world, Fisher said. The United States may or may not be in the major producers club. Canada, Sweden, and Finland probably won't be wood producers, Fisher said.
Why? Brazil, New Zealand and Indonesia have already shifted from being hunter-gatherers of wood to being tree farmers. They have made huge investments in tree plantations while the other countries are still relying primarily on found wood -- on God's wood.
The reasons tree plantations haven't become widespread in the United States are two-fold, Fisher said. First, until recently we've had an abundant supply of native stands of both pinewood and hardwood. Second, there has been a tendency to romanticize forests and trees, thinking of them as being only worthwhile and aesthetically pleasing if they occur naturally.
Associated with the aesthetics is the question of bio-diversity in a tree plantation, which may consist of trees of only one or two species compared to the dozens in a natural forest.
Tree plantations offer numerous advantages when it comes to wood production. They are an efficient user of space and inputs, offering high quality wood and ease of harvest, allowing improved varieties, modern management practices, and shortened rotation periods, Fisher said.
Rotation length -- the time between planting, harvest and replanting -- is crucially important to forest landowners. For most pinewood forests harvested for pulpwood, the rotation length is about 25 years. During this time, the landowner must pay interest on production costs, taxes, and absorb the price of herbicides and other management tools.
If the forest landowner can reduce the rotation length from 25 to 20 years, his or her investment cost can be reduced significantly. If the landowner can reduce the rotation age to 15 years, the initial investment can be reduced by half.
Plantations also allow the use of genetically engineered trees. Some modest advances have already been made in this area, but in the tree plantation material of the future, unwanted limbs may fall off automatically while trunks grow straighter. The wood will have built- in pest and disease resistance on the cellular level, thereby reducing the need for pesticides.
As for the question of biodiversity, Fisher said that plantations can be just as diverse as natural forest. The diversity occurs on a different level.
The insects that inhabit the downed logs, the shrubs, and soil insects and bacterium constitute a formidable level of bio-diversity.
The second most bio-diverse area in the forest is the forest canopy, the tree-tops, which are full of small insects and mites.
When we think of bio-diversity, we tend to think of a few highly visible species, such as white-tail deer and red cockaded woodpeckers. But bio-diversity in plantation forests is enormous and is very close to being the same, according to Fisher.
"When you walk into a forest, 40 percent to 50 percent of the biodiversity is from your knees down. It's just that in a plantation, the few species that are missing are highly visible," Fisher said.
Having tree plantations doesn't mean that there shouldn't be national parks or wilderness areas or that there shouldn't be areas set aside for the preservation of wildlife. But on some acres, we're going to have to do better than nature at growing trees, just as farmers do better than nature at growing food, Fisher said.
"If we went back to letting nature rule in the production of food, about 75 percent of the world population would starve to death," he said. "If we reverted to leaving it to natural forces for the production of wood, then 75 percent of the world's population would have to go without shelter and without the wood products we know."
For more information, Fisher suggested two Internet sites: The Food and Agriculture of United Nations site (http://www.fao.org) and Resources for the Future (RFF) (http://www.rff.org), an independent, nonprofit research organization focusing on conservation and use of natural resources.
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