Arkansas Agriculture Edition 25 : Page 5
The timber industry is big business in Arkansas. How big? Number 5 in the nation, that’s how big. Arkansas’ timber industry generates more than $2 billion in annual forest products sales, as well as providing the largest percentage of agriculture-related jobs that keep Arkansans working. Arkansas doesn’t have to watch a TV show to know how things are done in the timber cutting business. It’s happening in real life every day in our forests. Arkansas is blessed with forests. Almost 53 percent of the state is classified as “accessible” and “productive” forestland. The state is also blessed with a variety of tree species in both the hardwood (oaks, hickories) and softwood (pines) classifications. Arkansas’ timber industry has a long history, the beginning of which dates back to settlement. The vast bottomland hardwood forest of the eastern half of the state was systematically clearcut, drained and converted to farmland; its rich soils needed to fulfill the nation’s insatiable demand for cotton and then other row crops. As professional forest management began to take hold in the early 20 Century, the realization th industry when the converting of raw cotton into clothing and household items disappeared to cheaper labor in foreign countries, so too is the timber industry going through a sea change of its own – overseas that is. Matt King is the coordinator of Arkansas Farm Bureau’s Forestry Division. He says no new mills have been built in Arkansas in more than 30 years. Instead, King says the newer mills are being built overseas, particularly in Brazil where environmental regulations are less stringent and labor is cheaper than it is here. So the belief that a log cut down on grandpa’s back 40 will become a finished product here in Arkansas is changing. Not only that, King believes the idea that that log should remain in Arkansas needs to change too. There’s a whole world out there with specific needs and specialty markets outside of Arkansas that forest landowners need to identify of a renewable and sustainable forest took hold in many areas of the rest of the state where it made more sense to cut and replant forests rather than trying to replace them with row crops. Everything from small, local lumber mills to modern, large-scale paper and container mills took in all trees from grandpa’s back 40, as well as the bounty from professionally managed multi-section tracts of industrial forestland. That process continued with most of the timber taken here feeding the in-state mills. However, change has swept across Arkansas’ timber industry the last 20 years – and particularly in the last 10. Much like happened to the U.S. textile Arkansas Agriculture 5
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