Pine plantings tumbled 12 percent across the South in 2005, slumping to their lowest level in years, but a flurry of planting in the late '80s left the nation's leading timber-producing region with plenty of trees for lumber, paper making and a source of alternative fuels, experts say.
Experts cite lower timber prices, natural disasters, cutbacks in government incentive programs and the loss of forest land due to urban sprawl for the tree-planting skid in all but one of the last four years.
"When somebody puts a tree in the ground, they're making a bet that 20 to 30 years from now there's going to be a market," said Ken Stewart, director of the Georgia Forestry Commission. "Tree planting works in business cycles just like any other business."
The South isn't about to run out of trees, and the region may actually produce a greater volume of wood because of genetically superior pine trees and more use of herbicides and fertilizers to maximize growth, experts say.
Because of improved genetics, the current generation of pines can produce about twice as much cellulose as unimproved natural trees, Stewart said.
The planting statistics were reported in a quarterly newsletter published by Albany-based F&W Forestry Services, one of the South's leading timber management and consulting firms with 12 offices in the region. They are compiled annually by the Forestry Commission, based on reports from Kentucky, Oklahoma and 11 Southern states.
The decline became sharper in 2003 when several major pulp and paper companies begin selling off timberland, according to the newsletter.
Although timber prices have improved slightly from a few years ago, the higher prices have not stopped the planting decline, the newsletter said.
Southern landowners planted 2 million acres of pine trees in 2000, but only 1.8 million acres in 2002 and 1.1 million acres in 2003. In 2004, plantings climbed slightly to 1.2 million acres before dropping to 1 million acres last year.
By comparison, landowners replanted about 2 million acres every year from 1985 to 1990 at the height of the federal Conservation Reserve Program, which paid landowners to plant trees on marginal farmland and other less desirable land. Funding for such programs has been abolished or sharply reduced in recent years.
David Hoge, of the USDA Forest Service's regional office in Atlanta, said mill closings, hurricanes and development are important factors in replanting decisions.
"A poor landowner hit by a tornado, hurricanes and a beetle outbreak doesn't have the financial cash flow to try again," he said. "Also, with the constant growth of the South's population, we're seeing land values increase to the point where it's not economical to engage in forestry as an investment."
Globalization has also had an impact on forestry, with Southern tree farmers facing increasing competition from foreign wood producers, Stewart said.
"There's an incentive to produce overseas and ship into this market," he said.
The Forestry Commission remains committed to supporting traditional industries, such as the pulp and paper mills, specialty markets such as wood composites and developing a market for wood as an alternative energy source, he said.
Ethanol can be produced more cheaply from pine trees than corn, and the conversion of 19 million tons of waste wood to ethanol could replace 20 percent of the gasoline used in Georgia each year, he said.
"We've got more commercial timberland than any other state," Stewart said. "We've got a big economic engine looking for more and more purpose. One market is going to be energy."Associated Press via Duluth News Tribune
