Sunday, October 21, 2012

New Market - what everyone actually wants

If Wisconsin’s corn crop came in at about 50 bushels per acre on a good year, and our dairy farmers just milked their cull and sick cows after selling off their best milkers for hamburger – these would be huge stories today and this would not be accepted and tolerated.

Wisconsin actually has a more abundant crop that is managed exactly this way – yet almost nobody knows or cares….

Our ten million acres of privately owned timber grows at 25% of its potential in volume and value every year – because our forest owners have indeed sold off their good trees just leaving the cull trees to grow for the future!  Just ask any forest owner – they know what really happens in the woods.  Don’t ask a professional forester – they are so deep in the phony forestry, they won’t say a word of truth, but will likely spin a story of sustainable forestry that in reality only props up their job with little benefit to the forest or the timber grower.

The reason this problem persists is there has not been an alternative to the industrial forestry that has dominated the land for the last 150 years.  Everyone makes the best of a bad situation as it has been better than nothing.

Now – there is a much better choice for everyone and the forest.  There is a new way – just the opposite of what has been business as usual in the forest.

Forest owners around the world are learning to take control of their resources, perform a small annual harvest, make some high value wood products and sell direct to customers – eliminating all the middlemen and brokers – earning a fair price for their trees for the first time in history.  Valuing the forest for future income encourages wise long term management of the forest for the first time in history.  This is what every forest owner and every professional forester actually wants – they just never knew it was possible in the past.  Now just the effort required to bring about change is blocking much movement, but one family business keeps striving to break up the logjams of tradition and inertia.

Wisconsin’s forestry professionals refuse to acknowledge that there is an alternative to the industrial forestry that supports their jobs, but the Timber Growers business model is recognized around the world by the United Nations and other groups as the leading marketing innovation in the global timber industry today.  Timber Growers has been invited as a featured speaker at the World Teak Conference in Bangkok in March 2013 and the United Nations International Conference on Wood in S Africa next October.  Past international conference presentations have been made in India, Viet Nam, New Zealand and Timber Growers is currently participating in marketing programs in Ecuador and Brazil
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