By Lorry Erickson
Regional Editor
Country Today, Aug. 23,2000
LONE ROCK -- The Sustainable Woods Cooperative is open for business.
Three years in the planning, the Lone Rock-based cooperative officially opened its doors June 10.
Organizers say the Sustainable Woods Cooperative is the first business of its kind in the country combining certified sustainable forest management by its members and certified chain-of-custody sales of wood products from
members' forests.
"We're out to literally build a new economic and forest management system to improve the health of forests in southwestern Wisconsin," said Tom Thieding, president of the cooperative.
Mr. Thieding, the executive director of communications for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, is one of 115 private landowners in 11 southwestern Wisconsin counties who formed the cooperative. The members own approximately 17,000 acres of woodland.
"Our ultimate goal as a member-owned cooperative is to improve the quality of local woodlots by operating a business that returns profits from manufacturing members' logs to our members to assist them in their stewardship efforts," Mr. Thieding said.
While there was no other sustainable forestry cooperative to pattern theirs after, Mr. Thieding said the group modeled its cooperative after other agricultural cooperatives.
"The co-op model of value-added processing and marketing has been there, but we're just applying it to wood instead of milk or grain," he said.
What is unique about the Sustainable Woods Cooperative is that marketing is connected with forest management, Mr. Thieding said.
"We are functioning with the goal of empowering private woodland owners to help manage their woodlots," he said
Mr. Thieding helps manage an 11-acre woodlot on his wife's parents' farm near Montfort. He also does some woodworking as a hobby and sees the difference between what woodlot owners are paid for a log vs. the cost of kiln-dried wood.
"There are still 'log cowboys' who will pay farmers cash on spot to harvest their wood when landowners often could get 10 times that amount," Mr.Thieding said.
Since the first of the year, the cooperative has been sawing members' logs and drying them in the co-op's solar kiln.
A solar kiln treats the wood "kinder" than other kilns because it has a little slower drying process, Mr. Thieding said.
The cooperative will add several more solar kilns this year, and possibly a more traditional dehumidification kiln for drying wood during the winter months.
Right now, milling is done elsewhere but the cooperative plans to add a manufacturing operation to process the majority of the timber into high value-added hardwood flooring and millwork and kiln-dried lumber.
They will be targeting sales to flooring installers, carpenters and local craftsmen.
The cooperative also is working with the Wisconsin Green Building Alliance to identify custom projects and develop the sustainable wood product market for green-built homes.
Sustainable Woods Cooperative received its chain-of-custody certification from the Forest Stewardship Council, providing third-party certification that all wood processed and sold through the cooperative is from sustainably managed forests.
Certified sustainable forest management plans are written by two forest resource managers with whom the cooperative has formed an alliance: Jim Birkemeier of Timbergreen Forestry, Spring Green, and Fred Clark of Clark
Forestry, Baraboo.
Both forest resource managers have received certification by SmartWood and are able to write forest management plans that meet the cooperative's requirements and compliance with state forestry programs.
"The extra value-added income generated from direct sales to consumers is allowing forest owners to manage their timber much more intensively than ever before," Mr. Birkemeier said.
"Timber can be selectively harvested using low-impact methods on a regular cutting cycle. This can greatly increase the productivity of a woodlot while protecting the environment from major disturbance."
Several other wood cooperatives are being formed in the Midwest and Northeast, combining sustainable forest management with marketing or processing of members' logs.
They all share the goal of empowering landowners with forest management knowledge and offering marketing or manufacturing to capture added value of harvested logs.
"Private landowners have been missing out on the profits being made when value is added to their logs. These wood cooperatives being formed will help capture those profits, but more importantly, provide them with sustainable forest management information and assistance," Mr. Thieding said.
"This movement is really unique because we can link people directly to the forests by showing how woodlots are managed, and how the cooperative assists landowners through its processing and marketing."
For additional information, contact the Sustainable Woods Cooperative at P.O. Box 307, Lone Rock, WI 53556, phone (608) 583-7100, or visit the cooperative's Web site at www.sustainablewoods.com.
