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LET US TEACH YOU TO THIN YOUR PLANTATIONBy Paul D. Teter Recently a retired peanut geneticist in south Georgia asked us how to thin his ex-CRP pines. To his surprise, we advised against row-thinning and advocated leaving all defect-free trees above a certain size, with complete disregard for spacing. He inspected such a thinning we had marked and sold near his land. We challenged him to find a pulpwood-quality tree left in the stand. He hasn't pointed one out to us yet. His
stand contains 56.4 acres, and our detailed cruise showed a stand completing
its 13th growing season now worth about $773 per acre. As a scientist, he was concerned about
careful management of a natural asset worth $43,597 and still growing rapidly. Using
PTAEDA2V, we forecast the growth of his asset with two different
treatments. One is an operator-selected
thinning. In it there is no prior
sampling and analysis; the operator cuts all trees in every 5th row
plus trees that he selects in the other four rows to improve spacing. The stand would have about the same
pulpwood-quality rate after thinning as before (about 30-45% because they were
planted during the early days of genetic improvement). The second is a thinning that removes all
trees except those of sawtimber quality and at least 5.6. DBH, these being
conspicuously marked with blue paint. Our
analysis of the difference in cash flows from these treatments is as follows: Method
Estimated Thin Income Estimated Harvest Total Operator
$340
$2032 $2372 Marked
$334 $3560
$3894 The
detailed cruise of the stand cost him $1,500, and he paid us another $300 to
spend a morning with him and his son teaching them how to mark a sample acre of
the stand. We supplied him with a steel
tape marked for the 5.6. DBH cut-off point.
They soon became experts in marking the correct trees to leave. Using
our detailed cruise, we also furnished him a detailed schedule of the trees to
be cut showing number of trees by one-inch DBH classes, heights, and weights so
that he could obtain per-ton bids from timber buyers. If
our growth-and-yield program is as accurate as we think it is, he should be
able to increase his total cash flows from $133,781 to $219,622 over a ten-year
period. This will be his reward for not
settling for a conventional thinning, investing $1,800 for data and instruction
he could not obtain otherwise, purchasing a paint gun and paint, and putting
his son to work. We
would love to teach you to mark your plantation too. |