McEvoy, T.J. 2002. The Future of Forests and Forest Products: Some Thoughts on What’s to Come in Our Industry.

Forest
Products Equipment Journal. January Issue, pp 13 - 14. [Updated to Fall 2009]

Some Thoughts about the Future of Forests and Forest Products

Almost every attempt to predict the future of the forest products industry since the end of World

War II has not even come close to describing what has happened. For instance, economists have been

predicting shortfalls of timber since the late 50's, shortfalls that never appeared. Another example:

companies that moved from the West coast to the Southeastern U.S., relying on growth projections for

genetically-improved Southern pine forests, now have discovered their projections over-estimate actual

yields. In other words, trees are not growing as fast as they had predicted, causing excess capacity for

some mills and forcing others to contemplate moving elsewhere; this time, experts say, to the

hardwood forests of the Northeast. And who among us predicted the meteoric rise of radical

environmentalism which has virtually brought the U.S. Forest Service -- debatably, the premier land

managing agency in the world -- to its knees?

So much has happened in forestry over the past thirty years that the only constant anymore is

change. What used to be a staid, comfortably predictable but sometimes boring field is now at the

center of many debates, and no one has a crystal ball, or at least no one is willing to say where we are

headed. But “the wave of the future is here, and there is no avoiding it.”

The future is a single path from a virtually infinite array of opportunities. But divining that path

is anybody’s guess. Sure, “past is prologue,” and circumstances of the present affect the chances of any

given future, but the connection between here-and-now and next year, or twenty years from now, ends

there. In a sense, the future only exists as we know it in the present, and this is why few of us are ever

prepared for what’s next. But there are some ‘indicators’ worth thinking about to help divine alternative

futures for forests and forest industry in the U.S.

The next economic expansion (which I predict will be sooner, rather than later) will launch a
period of economic growth the likes of which the world has never seen. And the mantra of this

expansion is ‘globalism’; whether we had intended it or not, our fate is now tied to the rest of world and

we are fast approaching a single, worldwide economy that floats (or sinks) all ships. The U.S. is poised

to lead this expansion, but doing business in this “brave new world” will be far different than in the

past. We will likely gain in areas of high technology and investment, but at the expense of labor: there

are just too many emerging economies, like China which recently joined the World Trade Organization,

that have unbelievably cheap labor. For many third-world countries, exploitation of low-cost labor is

the only way to grow their economies and the U.S. -- and other wealthy nations around the world --

must be willing to help.

One day soon, a wood supplier in the U.S. will be able to communicate with a manufacturing

facility in China, through a simultaneous-translation function over the World Wide Web (in other

words, language barriers are no longer a problem), effecting a transaction almost as easily as selling

wood to a buyer in a neighboring state. It will be cheaper to export wood for processing in China,

and importing the finished product, than manufacturing at home. I don’t advocate exporting jobs, but

the American economy is no longer insulated, and it will become less so in the future. Our success

will increasingly depend on the successes of our trading partners. This is not especially good news for

a labor-intensive industry, unless it attempts to position itself to take advantage of these changes.

If you have avoided the Internet revolution, it is time to learn about it. Within the next ten

years, most business now conducted by traditional means will take place over the Internet.

Closer to home, forest ownership is changing. The generation that lived through “multiple-use,”

“green gold,” “wood is renewable” and all the other cliches, is passing its woodlands on to its heirs or

younger buyers. These new owners are even more distant from the land than their predecessors, and so

are less likely to manage lands for traditional forest values. Among new owners who recently acquired
land, the most commonly stated reason as to why they obtained forest is: it came with the house or

home site. Of course there is a chance these new owners will take over the management efforts of those

who came before them, provided there are no regulations that prevent them from doing so. But state

and local regulation of harvesting practices and forest use will increase in the future making harvest and

extraction of timber a much more involved process than it is today. For many of these new owners, the

hassle (not to mention what many of them have been led to believe is environmental degradation) of

harvesting will not be worth the income, unless stumpage is a lot more valuable than it is today

-- which is a distinct possibility.

Sometime soon -- certainly within the next 20 years, maybe within the next five -- the

U.S. Forest Service will change its charter, removing the ‘timber production’ element from its mission.

When this happens, Forest Service lands will no longer serve as local timber baskets, and many

unprepared timber-dependent communities will suffer. The argument raised by those who champion a

‘hands-off’ policy is this: public lands are too important for “watershed protection, critical habitats for

threatened species, wilderness (a designation only Congress has the right to grant), recreation, and to

demonstrate ecosystem-approaches to managing private lands.” Although I don’t completely agree with

these arguments, the facts are this type of sentiment is held by a majority of Americans: leave our

public lands alone if private forests are capable of meeting demand. The future of public lands - federal

and state -- is that of reserves; extractive uses of these lands will be the exception rather than the rule.

There are just too many people who want it this way.

Less wood supply from public lands means more demand from private lands, and higher

stumpage prices. But is the price differential enough to compel new owners to manage, even if local

regulations will allow them to do so? Your guess is as good as anyone’s, but one day society may take

the position that our forests are ‘too valuable’ for timber production.
 So where will timber come from, and what about demand? Remember back in the mid70's we

were hearing about the pending “paperless society” thanks to computers? Yet the computer revolution

has done nothing to reduce paper use in the developed world, and it is doubtful anything on the horizon

will replace the need for ‘hard-copies.’ Witness, too, the very recent demise of ‘electronic-books.’

There will most likely always be a demand for wood fiber, but here is the catch: the source of this fiber

may not be trees, or trees growing in forests.

Our paper habits aside, demand for wood will likely increase with population, at least in the

foreseeable future, because it is still a popular and cost-effective building material. For how long, no

one knows. But consider this: breakthroughs in bioengineering may allow us to ‘grow’ wood fiber in

vats. Extruded two-by-sixes and other structural members, possibly with characteristics superior to

natural wood, may one day displace the need to process trees. And, who knows, a by-product of the

process might be a protein that is easily processed into a cheap, but highly nutritious food that we’ll all

get used to (One can imagine the advertisements for ‘proto-chicken’ -- “Tastes better than chicken, and

no bones!”).

Of course there will always be a demand for natural wood since it has a beauty and texture that

will prove impossible to duplicate (even though Pergo flooring has come close!). One day (perhaps far

into the future, but maybe not) people will hang veneer panels of wood on walls for aesthetic purposes

in the same way we today enjoy fine paintings, photography and other objects. Real solid wood may

become so scarce in the distant future that even pieces we now throw into the fire will be cherished, but

for decorative and/or historical purposes.

Here is another technological future to consider: energy, one of the highest costs of production

today may one day be a minor cost. In a universe composed of mass and energy, it seems unlikely that

a shortage of one is apt to stop the progress of humankind. And if you’re the type who likes to
contemplate conspiracies, consider the possibility that energy has already been resolved and the

powers-that-be are keeping it secret because the world might not survive the revolution that would

result from limitless energy, destroying overnight the basis upon which perhaps two-thirds of the

world’s production depends. If and when the physics of energy supply is resolved (or revealed),

releasing the innovation will be tricky. But in the near-term, wood – especially for home heating – will

become a fuel that transitions us into the limitless energy period described above. Not chunk wood in

Franklin stoves, but chips and pellets processed less than a mile from the stump and burned in

gasification systems capable of yielding far greater efficiencies, and a new, very promising soil

amendment: charcoal, also known as biochar.

Less than 50 years ago, archaeologists roaming the Amazon Basin discovered highly productive

agricultural soils, high in carbon and clearly the product of humans. These soils were three to five

times more productive than surrounding Oxisols, and black from carbon concentrations as high as 20 to

30 percent. Labeled terra preta de indios, Portuguese for ‘burnt earth of the Indians,’ it was the pre-

Columbian creation of these soils that allowed populations to thrive in the Amazon region for

thousands of years before the Spanish arrived in the early 16th Century. These carbon-rich soils have

only recently been studied over the past 20 years by soil scientists who have successfully exported the

technology to the developed world.

Adding carbon to soils greatly increases the soil’s ability to hold water and nutrients, but more

importantly – especially when it comes to forest soils – the highly porous and inert carbon provides

living spaces for micro-flora and fauna that are essential to forest ecosystems. And, since the carbon

comes from plant materials and not fossil fuels, when it is added to soils as ‘biochar,’ the overall effect

is a net removal of carbon for the global carbon budget. Thus by using biochar as a soil amendment,

carbon is sequestered in soils where it can do some good; so much so that production of biochar will
have a positive effect on forest product markets, and on forest ecosystems after energy is extracted from

the wood (gasification yields mostly hydrogen, some methane and carbon monoxide). The left-over

carbon is applied to soils, increasing the capacity of soil ecosystems to do their business. Although

biochar is still an emerging science, I am convinced it will prove to be the agricultural and forestry

revolution on the 21st Century.

Heavy-handed regulation, the Internet, globalism, wood growing in vats, limitless energy --

perhaps all of this is nothing more than the wanderings of an undisciplined, fertile imagination and

none of it will come to pass. But who would have predicted less than 100 years ago humans traveling

in airplanes, or inter-planetary exploration? Thirty years ago, the idea of a computer on every desk

was ridiculed by most of the people who designed room-sized, mainframe computer systems. And

twenty years ago, a facsimile machine seemed nothing short of magical; now they’re in every office.

Fifteen years ago almost no one had heard of the World Wide Web, and its unbridled growth fueled a

business cycle (an economic expansion followed by contraction) the likes of which this country has

never seen. If wealth had evaporated at any other time in American history as much as it did during the

first 18 months of the 21st Century, it would most likely have caused a depression that would have

made the “Great Depression” look like a market correction. But we have survived, and will continue to

survive and prosper. The big question is: What’s next and are you ready for it?

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