Timber markets

I am attending the Forest InSight conference in Valdosta, Georgia. The picture is the hotel across from the venue. I don’t have one more interesting. It is interesting to me that they have so many palm trees here.

The outlook for southern forests is good from both the supply and demand sides. Supply calculations are based on a simple return to the average. The most recent recession was bad enough but the recovery has the worst in modern history. If housing starts just return to the long term average, things would be fine for timber demand. Supply is a little more complicated. The mountain pine beetle has destroyed vast areas in the west and in Canada. After the bugs kill the trees, they can be salvaged for 8-12 years. After that, there is too much rot. So this supply has been flooding onto the market, but it is almost out of time, so this supply will be done. Eastern Canada is currently facing bureaucratic and regulatory barriers. Many of these forests are government owned. This is also true in the American west. Government owned lands are more susceptible to pressure groups.

So the only region left fully standing is the South. Most of the forests in the South are privately held, often by smaller owners, so there is widespread acceptance of forestry in the region. When demand picks up, the South has the capacity to meet it. And the South is the region where mills are opening. It doesn’t matter how much forest you have, if it is too far from a mill it is not much use.

There is a permutation. The price of saw-timber is coming more in line with smaller timber, as engineered wood makes it possible to use smaller pieces. Most forestry is built around growing saw timber, eventually. Pulp and chip & saw are just intermediate steps. Maybe in future these will be products in their own rights.    

PINEMAP – southern pine and global warming

Global warming will create winners and losers. Among the losers are inhabitants of low islands. Southern pine forests look like winners, based on current climate models.
I learned some details from Dr. Tim Martin, who had worked on PINEMAP, a series of projects designed to study the effects of warming on forests and their possible role in mitigation of climate change.

Productivity in southern pine forests will rise with the projected temperature increase and elevated levels of CO2. Studies of slash and loblolly pine indicate significantly more growth, with the greatest gains coming from the northern part of the range. Beyond that, we can basically move loblolly genetics north, planting the more southern sub-species can be planted farther north. This has already happened to some extent, since many of the nurseries are in the south. A threat comes to these forests from an unexpected source. The climate change models indicate that parts of the great plains will become drier and less able to support crops. The SE is expected to be warmer and as wet, maybe wetter. Agriculture might move back east. Forests are currently planted on land not in demand for agriculture. They might be priced out of the market. But that is longer off.

Of course, making predictions is always dangerous too far out. The climate models have not proved completely accurate up until now. It is better to have lots of options than go with just one plan. The challenge is that the trees we plant today will still be growing decades from now, so we have to do now based on the most likely scenarios with enough variation to keep options open.  

PINEMAP Pine Integrated Network: Education, Mitigation, and Adaptation project (PINEMAP) is one of three Coordinated Agricultural Projects funded in 2011 by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). PINEMAP focuses on the 20 million acres of… pinemap.org

Congaree too

The Congaree National Park is mostly swamp. They have a boardwalk that takes you across. W/o that, it would be nearly impassible. There are big bald cypress & water tupelo. Cypress have “knees” that stick up through the mud. The brochure says that scientist have not yet figured out the purpose. Maybe there is no purpose. Shit just happens.

I know all the photos look alike but consider. The bald cypress you can recognize by the knees.  The next picture is the tupelo. Notice the way the base of both species flair out to provide stability. Notice also the water lines part way up the trunks. The water sometimes rises five feet or more above the ground level. It is a water dominated ecosystem.

Forest conference in Georgia

The forestry business has changed remarkably in the last ten years. Gone are the vertically integrated paper and timber firms that once owned and managed vast tracts of land. They sold this off to private owners: organizations like TIMOs, which manage tracts of timberland the way REITs do in real estate, and individuals like me. This vastly decentralized the business creating challenges and opportunities. The challenge was that no longer did you have staffs of professionals managing all that timber. The opportunity was that thousands of little guys were given the chance to try new things, taking the risks and getting the rewards.

Big companies to smaller owners
The big old companies did lots of research, but they mostly kept it to themselves. It was proprietary. The breakup of the big firms led to the creation of consulting firms and nurseries providing new and better trees. This time, fortuitously, also was a time of great progress in genetics. The loblolly pine is the most studied tree in the world. Its genome has been sequenced. And the trees today and qualitatively different from their wild ancestors. This is currently done the old fashioned way with selected breeding. GMOs still have not come to the piney woods. Controlled pollination produces great trees.

One of the collateral developments of having decisions in the hands of many individual landowners is that the scientists needed to develop a way to explain this us ordinary guys.

Keep it simple
They rate trees on an easy to understand PRS scale- productivity, rust and straightness. P – is for productivity, how well it grows. R is for rust. Fustiform rust is a fungus disease that has long plagued loblolly pines. New varieties are almost immune. S is for straightness, form in general. New varieties are straighter with fewer branches. Unfortunately, you usually have to trade off some traits for others, so you are not looking for the “best” trees but for the ones most appropriate for your conditions. You try to get the highest PRS, but you are concerned with the components.

Loblolly: the world’s most studied tree
As I wrote, the loblolly is the world’s most studied tree in the world. It is also very mutable. In the rust studies, they found that heritability of the immunity is 95-98%. Of course, it is a never ending quest. The pathogens adapt as we do. But it looks like we can stay ahead.
My picture is from the patio of the conference center, the “Rainwater Center.” I thought it was a cool name, taken from nature, but it is actually named after a guy called Rainwater. It is hard to see in the photo, but it was raining hard with the sun shining. If you look closely, you can see the drops on the pond. A pretty sight.

Talking to forest folk
My forest landowner conference ends tomorrow with a visit to a local forestry operation. People working in forestry are almost always happy and friendly. I think that comes from the long-term perspective you have to take. It is also a type of quiet optimism. We see that we can do lots of things, but patience and circumspection are prerequisites. Nature provides options but will not cut you any slack or give points of effort.
I think we might judge a group by its habitual platitudes. I get tired of those people talking about victimization and being denied stuff. I don’t like people who tell me why they cannot be expected to do things because of some earlier disadvantage or insult. You don’t hear that among the forestry types.

There were a couple of good ones I overheard at this conference. They were not new, but I am glad they are still around. One was, “promise little but deliver a lot.” Another, “I don’t care if the glass is half empty or half full; I know it is refillable.” Or the general sentiment that when your forest is healthy, mine is better off too. Good old American values. If you got a problem, figure out how to solve it; don’t wait for others to do it for you and don’t blame them, but find friends to help.

Forest InSight Conference

I am attending the Forest InSight conference in Valdosta, Georgia. The picture is the hotel across from the venue. I don’t have one more interesting. It is interesting to me that they have so many palm trees here.

Positive outlook for southern forests
The outlook for southern forests is good from both the supply and demand sides. Supply calculations are based on a simple return to the average. The most recent recession was bad enough but the recovery has the worst in modern history. If housing starts just return to the long term average, things would be fine for timber demand.

Supply side complicated

Supply is a little more complicated. The mountain pine beetle has destroyed vast areas in the west and in Canada. After the bugs kill the trees, they can be salvaged for 8-12 years. After that, there is too much rot. So this supply has been flooding onto the market, but it is almost out of time, so this supply will be done. Eastern Canada is currently facing bureaucratic and regulatory barriers. Many of these forests are government owned. This is also true in the American west. Government owned lands are more susceptible to pressure groups.

So the only region left fully standing is the South. Most of the forests in the South are privately held, often by smaller owners, so there is widespread acceptance of forestry in the region. When demand picks up, the South has the capacity to meet it. And the South is the region where mills are opening. It doesn’t matter how much forest you have, if it is too far from a mill it is not much use.

Saw timber and small wood prices converge
There is a permutation. The price of saw-timber is coming more in line with smaller timber, as engineered wood makes it possible to use smaller pieces. Most forestry is built around growing saw timber, eventually. Pulp and chip & saw are just intermediate steps. Maybe in future these will be products in their own rights.  

Congaree National Park

Went to Congaree National Park in South Carolina. I wanted to see the world’s biggest loblolly pine and I did. The park was established in order to protect un-logged old growth timber. It is a wet land. The trees grow big because the fertile soil and frequent inundation from the Congaree River, which carries water and silt.

The big pine was hard to see, since I could not linger. Even in on this cool day, there were clouds of mosquitoes When I stopped more than a few seconds, they swarmed. I had to breathe through clenched teeth so as not to breathe them in.

My picture shows the big tree. I tried to get a picture of myself with it, for comparison, but I am not good at selfies. Loblolly live around 250 years, max. You can see that they then blow down or the tops come off.

Why women get less

When I graduated with my MBA in 1984, some firms interviewed all of the women before the first man. One of my good female friends had a job offer the day before my first interview for the same job at the same firm. Three of my female friends ended up getting the real plum jobs at great firms. They were smart and deserved the success.
But within two years, all three had “downshifted” and taken what they considered more fulfilling and less stressful jobs. The same people who praised them for landing the tough jobs praised them for being smart enough to walk away from them.
This leads to my take on inequality. Men still have fewer options when it comes to “downshifting”. If a man leaves a good paying, high profile job, he does not get praised for being smart enough to “have a life.” Rather, he is castigated for being a bit of a deadbeat, not ambitious … I am sure that everyone here can supply the terms.
Life on the fast track is often unpleasant. You have to make decisions that trade off your current happiness – and maybe that of people you love – for the promise of … something. The incentive to keep running takes the carrot of that promise, but also the stick of shame if you slow down or leave the track altogether. This is where we still treat men and women differently. Maybe getting off that fast track is good decision, but after taking a more holistic approach to life, it churlish to complain that others have passed you by on the track you have abandoned.
Within a few years of graduation, women with MBAs earn lower salaries, manage fewer people, and are less pleased with their progress than men.
bloomberg.com

Super-forcasting


Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

A New York Times Bestseller”The most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.”—Jason Zweig, The Wall Street Journal   Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether…

amazon.com

I went to see Phillip Tetlock at AEI last night. Tetlock built his reputation by assessing the actual ability of experts to predict complex political and societal trends. His research showed the experts were not much better, and sometimes not as good, as random chance.

Blind monkey can beat the experts in actual predictions.  Experts add value by framing questions and identifying options
The classic monkey throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal can often beat the stock pickers. This result is not a damning as it appears on the face. Experts may be good at framing questions, which is really the hardest part of decision making, and identifying options. The dark flinging monkey has a simpler problem set, one already designed by experts.

Bayesian better
Predictions could also be improved by using a Bayesian approach, i.e. continually integrating new information, and speaking in terms of probabilities rather than “could happen.” The biggest impediment to experts doing this was their dislike of being seen to be uncertain or changing their minds. The prognosticators or prognosticators should not flip flop, even if it improves their outcomes. As a result, most experts talk more in vague “could be” rather than actionable probabilities and can trim their predictions to the results.

Most social studies studies cannot be replicated
Unfortunately, the social sciences are full of bad studies. Recent research indicated that 2/3 of published studies in the social sciences could not be replicated, i.e. were probably wrong. There is signification bias at work and it is difficult to overestimate the power of preconceptions to shape perceptions. Bayesian analysis does not eliminate biases or preconceptions, but does make them explicit and so testable and so subject to modification and inspiring learning. You cannot improve if you don’t keep score. This is a score keeping.

“Good Judgement Project”
Tetlock was actually at AEI to talk about his new book, “Superforcasting: the Art and Science of Prediction,” in which he described his IARPA funded “Good Judgement Project.” It was kind of a tournament of prediction. The only criterion was the accuracy of the predictions. They started with the base rate. Recall that even a broken clock is right twice a day and a random guess will sometimes produce a correct result. For illustration, a base rate of 25% would be the expected outcome if you took a multiple choice test where all the questions had four choices. For the tournament they tried to choose things that could be known in the passage of time and not subject to lots of interpretation. They also wanted events in the “Goldilocks zone,” i.e. not something so simple that results could be predicted with certainty using equations and past experience, and not something completely random like a fair roulette wheel, where any patterns you identified would be mistakes.
They were looking for elite “superforcasters.” Tetlock joked that he was not trying to be inclusive in the results, since some people would just be better than others, but the tournament was open to all with the best rising to the top.

Let them try and see who does it best
The tournament was a proof of concept. Predictions can be made better, although never perfect. Success superforcasters tended to be quick to learn from their mistakes and adjust and took into account a wider variety of information sources. It really does help to have discordant and even unpleasant information. You cannot make sound decisions if you are afraid to offend someone. But recall that the person with the extreme view is sometimes right and usually useful, but for the most part the probabilities work, i.e. the random weirdo is unlikely to be Einstein.

In many ways, the new science or methods of forecasting are disruptive work against established experts and so difficult to plant in an organization that has a hierarchy. The best results may come from people of lower status. They have the advantage of not having bought into the current reality.

Don’t mistake ONE common man for THE common man
Again, we do not want to take more from this lesson than it has to teach. The headline that “Common folks beat the experts” is misleading. THE common folks (in the aggregate of the masses) can produce lots of good ideas but the chances of A (i.e. any particular) common man doing so is a low probability outcome. If you take too much advice from the common man you met on the street, you will soon get grief – and deserve the grief you get.
Anyway, I bought the book (paid more for the honor of buying it at the event) and will read it. What I heard tracks with lots of what I have read about decision-making. Of course, it might be a false correlation, since Tetlock has been a source for many other things I have read and/or much of what I have read (guys like Kahneman and Tversky) have influenced Tetlock. I suppose they would call that confirmation bias.

Sand hills and longleaf pines

Took a side trip up through the sand hills in South Carolina and up into North Carolina, mostly following old US 1. It is a truly delightful area with lots of big pines and hardwood mix. I started off in the Sand Hill State Forest in South Carolina. There were logging operations in process and they clearly manage the forest very well. Use of fire is evident. The big longleaf pines remind me of the ponderosa pines in the West. It looks like snow in my pictures. That is the sand that gives the region its name and which probably explains why it is still in forest.

White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia

Went to the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia. Food was good, especially an excellent mushroom soup. They make a big deal about being a farm to table place, with most of the food coming from the local area. As our modern world becomes more homogeneous, people are looking for more authentic experiences, what you might call the back stories for their products. This applies especially to food.

Food is intimate and eating is or can be) a focal activity, one that adds meaning. If you are what you eat you eat what you are, or what becomes you. I do not believe locally grown organic food is better for health or necessarily for the environment. But I do like the idea that people might be involved with the production of food they eat and might be willing to pay a little more for the connection to local food producers. Relationships count.