A working forest is like a carrot patch. Here’s why
This orange vegetable can help us understand how sustainable forestry really is green
The sun was shining last Friday afternoon, so it was a perfect time to get out onto the vegetable patch and get the soil ready for planting my next crop of carrots.
While I was busy working in a wheelbarrow full of well-rotted manure, I couldn’t help thinking that a lot of commercial carrot farmers were probably doing pretty much the same thing — with probably less muscle effort and more sophisticated machinery of course.
But the underlying principle is the same: farmers invest in growing crops because they know they will be rewarded when their harvest reaches maturity, just as I’ll be rewarded by the delight of my family when they eat our home grown produce.
And the bigger the market for any particular crop, the more of it will be grown. So if people want carrots on the menu every day, then more farmers will get into carrot growing, and the more carrots will be grown.
As demand for carrots increases, existing carrot farmers will find it worthwhile to improve their soil — like me with my wheelbarrow of manure — so the same area of land will be able to produce more carrots than before. And as demand keeps on growing, more arable farmers will turn land over for carrot cultivation.
It’s the same in my vegetable patch. The popularity of carrots in my kitchen means that we’re growing more every year, not less.
And if I think about what happens in my professional life, then the forestry business works in pretty much the same way as my carrot patch. The more demand there is for responsibly produced timber products, the more trees will be planted.
Which is why when we look at areas like the southern states of the US, we can see that although demand for timber products has grown enormously over the last few decades, the amount of trees being grown hasn’t reduced at all. Far from it, the volume has almost doubled. So the forest is flourishing — thanks to demand.
As demand has grown, foresters there have invested in better trees, better husbandry and management practices. So the forests have become even more productive.
One part of that demand — for the wood that can’t be used as saw timber, such as diseased or crooked trees or wood from trees that are ‘thinned’ to make sure the others have more light — is helping to make the whole business even more profitable and therefore commercially sustainable.
When there wasn’t much of a market for that sort of timber it was often left to rot in the forest. Now foresters have an incentive to collect it and sell it. And one of the things low grade wood and low value residues are used to make is sustainable compressed wood pellets that can be used to generate renewable electricity at places like Drax Power Station.
It’s as if the carrot farmers had managed to find a way to sell the bits of their produce that have to be cut off before we cook them — the skin and the tops, or the poor individual carrots that are too small because I didn’t thin the row in a timely way, and that go straight into the compost bin. Finding a market for what used to be waste only makes them keener on carrots as a crop.
Helpfully, even if tastes change, and people start to want more turnips or parsnips instead of carrots, the farmers will be protected because the demand and use for the tops, skin, blemished and mis-shaped vegetables will still exist.
Selling such by-products like this is one way for foresters to make their whole businesses more viable, which encourages them to keep on planting, and caring for, more and more trees. And at the same time, it means generators like Drax can continue to give vital sustainable support to other renewable energy generators like wind and solar power.
Which of course is one of the reasons why carrots, which we all know are usually orange, can also be green.
