VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

The Most Direct Link to Knowledge Workers in the Southeast Forest Economy

HOW TO FIND A FORESTER TO PRODUCE YOUR POWERHOUSE PLANTATION

During ages of experience with practitioners of medicine, law, and accounting, laymen have learned that, although each has been certified or registered in some way, they vary widely in suitability as advisors for individuals with specific problems. This is rarely due to differences in intelligence, character, or education; it usually arises because each specializes in a certain field in his profession.

Forestry was just getting started in the U.S. about 100 years ago, and registration isn't yet 50 years old. Its practitioners are usually smart, ethical, trained, and specialized like other professionals, but most foresters are different in one way. They are employees of government agencies or private companies and have primary responsibility for and major competence in carrying out their employer's mission. This demanding task gives them little chance to learn techniques that would better serve other landowners who seek their advice. Applying a practice developed by their employers for one purpose to a tract whose owner has a different one is usually disastrous because this treatment sets performance of the investment for ten more years.

This is especially true of the Farm Service Agency's provisions for maintenance of CRP practices by using fire. In "Remember Los Alamos!" under the red "Pine Plantations" button, we have quoted the rules about how to use prescribed burns in CRP plantations. A more important provision governs thinning. The CRP contract requires thinning to "a minimum of 200 trees per acre, but leaving not more than 300/500 trees" and also includes the following (emphasis added):"For CRP plantations, a combination of row thinning and selective thinning is strongly recommended. This method removes every third, fourth, or fifth row entirely, then selectively removes trees from between the thinned rows. Trees between the thinned rows that are diseased, of poor form, small and slow growing, or crowding better trees are selected for removal, marked with paint, and harvested& .Selective thinning - marking trees throughout the stand for removal - allows full control to free up the best trees in the stand, but equipment operation can be difficult in dense stands and damage to leave trees can be significant."

We believe that concern about damage is unwarranted. It is harmful if it leads to choosing any form of row thinning. Regardless of conventional wisdom on the subject, we continually sell purely-selective thinnings with no price reduction or damage to remaining trees. For more detail and comments from the logger who cut one of them, click on http://www.vardaman.com/greensheets/firstthinn.htm

The CRP is subsidized by government to accomplish government purposes so its right to set the specs can't be contested. You must recognize, however, that required or recommended practices under it either increase risk or reduce income. The same thing is true of some big-company practices. Be careful.

On the other hand, foresters managing CRP tracts and big-company lands are often expert at woods work and may be the only ones available to you. You can assess one's suitability to be your advisor by watching what he insists on as the first step prior to thinning. It must be an inventory of the conditions in the stand, including spacing and number of trees by one-inch DBH classes, classification of them by quality, and total heights of enough trees to calculate SI-25. These data must then be analyzed with PTAEDA2V, the only growth-and yield program that can do this, to produce specific instructions to guide markers in choosing those to cut. Trying to use basal area as a guide is impossible. If he then goes on to calculate return on your investment, he's your man to produce a POWERHOUSE PLANTATION and increase your return by 50+%.