Family-forest Owners' Willingness to Harvest Sawlogs and Woody Biomass: The Effect of Price on Social Availability

Abstract

Understanding willingness to harvest (WTH) is essential to assessing the social availability of woody biomass from private land. Currently, the only economically feasible way to harvest woody biomass is in conjunction with sawlogs. We examined WTH sawlogs and woody biomass from owners of family forests using data from a survey of Missouri forest owners. While their WTH increased with revenue expected from woody biomass, revenue expected from sawlogs was a stronger influence. Incentive payments for woody biomass thus are unlikely to increase its supply, and the social availability of woody biomass will remain limited unless sawlog prices rise significantly.

Attitudinal and revenue effects on non-industrial private forest owners' willingness-to-harvest timber and woody biomass

“…Missouri (Aguilar et al, 2014a;Becker et al, 2010;Gruchy et al, 2011;Joshi and Mehmood, 2011). Becker et al (2010) reported significantly lower WTH woody biomass levels among absentee owners (i.e.…”

“…Owners' demographic characteristics such as age influence ownership objectives since older landowners are more likely to transfer or bequeath their forestland in the near future and would likely be less interested in harvesting timber and/or biomass (Butler and Leatherberry, 2004). Accordingly, older landowners have been found to be less likely to engage in commercial harvesting (Aguilar et al, 2014a;Becker et al, 2010;Gruchy et al, 2011;Joshi and Mehmood, 2011). However, a study conducted in Mississippi (Joshi et al, 2013) found that older NIPF owners were more likely to supply woody biomass as compared with younger landowners.…”

“…A woody biomass harvest must be done in conjunction with higher-value products (e.g. timber and pulpwood) in order to be economically feasible (Aguilar et al, 2014a;Hubbard et al, 2007;Saunders et al, 2012), but as pointed out by Aguilar et al (2014a), the published literature has come short in evaluating the social availability of woody biomass by not considering timber prices explicitly when estimating NIPF owners' WTH biomass. Third, this study contributes to the exploration of responsiveness to price and corresponding revenue per hectare changes.…”

“…comm., Aug. 17, 2011), and on average, there were around 49.40 green tons of woody biomass per hectare (Aguilar et al 2014a) leading to approximate biomass harvest revenues between $74/ha and $98.8/ha. Specific woody biomass revenues per hectare were set at $0, $49, $98, and $149.…”

Changing Times: Altering Establishment Spacing, Harvesting Frequency, and Harvesting Machines to Promote Increased Sawtimber Volumes

“…Forest landowners in the southeastern part of the United States are faced with multiple challenges when it comes to harvesting loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L) from their land. First, tract sizes are shrinking as lands become more fragmentized making it hard for landowners to find loggers willing to harvest their land (Daniel, 2012;Aguilar et al, 2014;Butler and Butler, 2016a). Next, plantations that promote woody biomass harvesting are being encourage but there are minimal markets available to sell the product to, stumpage prices are minimal if existent for the product, and today's standard sized machines aren't able to cost-effectively harvest the product so loggers aren't willing to cut the biomass for the landowner (Botard et al, 2015;BBI International, 2017;Gallagher et al, 2017;Yu et al, 2017).…”