I went down to Dillwyn, VA to inspect Virginia Tree Farm of the Year. It was a wonderful operation that I will write about later. The drive down is beautiful, along US 29 and 15. Dillwyn has its own railroad, called Buckingham Branch Railroad. It was founded in 1988 and is a family owned freight rail company. I didn’t know such things existed anymore. Who knew you could open your own railroad these days?
It carries mainly heavy commodities like wood and forest products. Buckingham County is a major Virginia wood basket. It also carries locally mined kyanite. I didn’t know what kyanite was until today. It is a mineral used in porcelain products, electrical insulators & abrasives. Lots of little things make the world work.
In my earlier post, I was talking about some of the things l learned about forestry genetics. There is a consortium dedicated to aggregating the information, linked below. Each year, we plant 820 million loblolly pine in the South. When you add in other southern pine species such as longleaf, slash etc, we are planting more than 1.2 billion trees every year.
Ironically, we are planting fewer trees per acre because the trees are so much better. In the recent past, landowners might plant 700-1000 trees per acre. This was necessary because of the high mortality rate. Better trees & better silvaculture mean that we can now plant 400-500 and expect better results.
(I read about forestry in China, where they paid peasants to plant trees. They planted thousands of trees every year and every year they needed to plant them again because they died. It was just a business. Nobody cared if the trees were property suited to local conditions. The peasants got paid to plant, the officials filled the quotas, everyone seemed green and they could do it over and over again. Better to have incentives in the future, not the past.)
I signed the contract a few day ago to replant on the land we clear cut last June. We will plant 15 acres of longleaf, 30 acres of loblolly and an acre of cypress. We will have just over 400 per acre. We were going to space them 10×10, but I learned that it might be better to space 5×20. Same number of trees per acre, but it will be easier to take care of the trees, since equipment can pass easily. I hope that I can get some biosolids, for example. http://treeimprovement.org
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
