One concern landowners may have when making forestland management decisions is the cost of forestry practices. They may worry that they cannot afford to complete activities such as planting or understory control, so they choose to do nothing. Knowing even a range of costs for forestry practices can help make decisions and lead to better forest management.

This document summarizes the results of a 2022 survey examining the cost of forestry practices across the southeastern United States. The 2022 survey underwent online formatting changes from previous versions to make the questionnaire more tabular and giving respondents more opportunities to describe costs further. The survey link was also disseminated through more outlets to access more participants.

Figure 1. Physiological regions in the South that were used in the 2022 Cost of Forestry Practices survey showing (A) the Southern Coastal Plain, (B) Northern Coastal Plain, and (C) Piedmont or similar uplands.

For this survey, three physiographic regions in the South were considered: the Southern Coastal Plain, Northern Coastal Plain, and Piedmont regions (figure 1). The results presented are based on 296 usable responses. Of those, 54 percent were from private family landowners, 29 percent from consulting firms, 12 percent from private forestry firms, 2 percent from publicly funded organizations, and 2 percent of respondents reported “other” for their organizational type. Results presented are adapted from the “2022 Cost and Trends for Forestry Practices in the South” Special Report in the November/December 2023 edition of Forest Landowner magazine.

Results

Mechanical Site Preparation

Mechanical site preparation was reported on 99,363 acres at an average cost per acre of $172.83 (table 1) and included 42 percent of the survey respondents. This included practices such as bedding, drum chopping, and shear and bed activities. Of the total acres reported, 58,217 of those acres included information on the number of passes, all of which were single-pass operations. There were not enough responses to report double-pass or triple-pass operations.

Planting

Pine seedlings were the only seedling type planted with enough data to report in 2022. A total of 185,315 acres of pine seedlings were planted (table 2) and included 71 percent of the survey respondents. Most of the pine seedlings planted were bareroot loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), which made up 55 percent of the total acres reported. Pine seedlings planted averaged 561 per acre for both hand planting and machine planting (table 2). Overall, hand planting costs 29 percent less than machine planting. The average cost of machine planting bareroot pine species on cutover land was 45 percent more than the average cost of hand planting all bareroot pine seedlings on similar sites.

Prescribed Burning

Forty-three percent of survey respondents reported prescribed burning costs for 2022. A ground drip torch was used in all cases for a total of 85,268 acres at an average cost per acre of $31.88 (table 3). Regional differences in costs were reported. In general, prescribed burning practices reported in the Piedmont region were more expensive than in other regions.

Chemical Application

Chemical applications were reported by 94 percent of respondents who treated 617,659 acres in 2022 (table 4). Site preparation, invasive plant control, and herbaceous weed control were the top reasons for treatment with the majority of acres (53 percent) treated as part of site preparation activities. Fifty-two percent of acres treated were aerially sprayed. Overall average cost per acre for all treatment purposes and all methods was $89.64 (table 4). Overall, aerial application methods were less expensive than ground application methods. Additionally, the average cost per acre was lower in the Southern Coastal Plain region than in other regions.

Fertilization

Twenty percent of respondents reported using fertilizer as a forestry practice in 2022. Those who indicated the use of fertilizer reported treating 212,266 acres at an average cost of $90.97 per acre (table 5). Aerial application of fertilizer accounted for 85 percent of all fertilization treatments reported for 2022.

Timber Cruising and Marking

Timber cruising was reported by 29 percent of 2022 survey respondents for a total of 148,684 acres. Fifty-four percent of the acres reported used the fixed area plot sampling method. Variable radius plot sampling cost on average 46 percent less than the fixed area plot sampling. The overall average cost per plot was $23.63. The overall average cost per acre for all methods was $9.12 (table 6).

For 2022, 8,367 acres were reported for marked timber operations, a decrease of more than 27,500 acres compared to those reported for 2020 (table 7). Only 11 percent of respondents reported completing any type of marking activity on their forest lands.

Precommercial Thinning

Precommercial thinning is often completed early during a rotation when trees may be in an overcrowded condition. For the 2022 survey, only 18 percent of survey respondents reported precommercial thinning on 12,305 acres (table 8).

Custodial Management

Custodial management costs may include road construction and maintenance, boundary line maintenance or surveys, insect and disease management, property taxes, fire protection activities, or legal fees. For 2022, 86 percent of respondents reported custodial management activities (table 9). Due to the increase in respondents participating in this question, we could list average cost per unit and unit of cost for many operation types (table 9).

Figure 2. Percent change in the average cost of forestry practices from 2020 to 2022.

Changes in Costs Estimates

Compared to the 2020 survey results, the cost of forestry practices increased except for timber cruising, hand planting, and precommercial thinning (figure 2). Overall average costs of timber marking increased the greatest from 2020 to 2022 (figure 2). Similar to survey results of recent years, fertilization and precommercial thinning were two of the lowest-responded practices by participants. However, both practices showed relatively large increases in total acres reported in 2022. Herbicide application showed a large increase in total acres reported from 2020 (approximately 43,000) to 2022 (approximately 617,000). When comparing timber marking and timber cruising acreages reported in 2020 to 2022, both showed large increases: 77 percent and 78 percent, respectively.

New Online Dashboard

In collaboration with the Forest Landowner Foundation, a new online dashboard was developed for the costs and trends of southern forestry practices (figure 3). The online and interactive platform that provides a comprehensive, data-driven experience to meet the needs of forest landowners, land managers, researchers, policymakers, and other forest enthusiasts seeking this valuable dataset. The platform offers a report of the 2022 Cost of Southern Forest Practices Survey, which is presented across various tabs, where you can explore regional bar charts and colored-coded maps, bar charts, and tables summarizing the average weighted cost per acre of various forest management activities. Moreover, you can filter data by up to three physiographic regions and five provider- landownership patterns. State-level data can be refined further by selecting the map, expanding the table, or drilling down on the bar chart. A helpful video visually demonstrates how to use this online platform on the Forest Landowner web page. Additionally, the platform provides summarized historical data from as far back as 1952, including trend data reported in nominal or historic dollars and real dollars, adjusted for inflation using the producer price index. The dashboard and demonstration video are available at https://www.forestlandowners.com/cost-and-trends-of-southern-forestry-practices/.

Figure 3. Landing page of the new online dashboard for costs and trends of southern forestry practices.

Summary

Forestry practice costs in the South have been more variable in the last 15 years than in past decades. This is due, in part, to the fact that the forest industry has been impacted during much of this time by suppressed stumpage prices. The economy and housing market crash in 2008 put financial pressure on corporate forest products companies. This pressure caused restructuring of many companies into timber investment management organizations (TIMO), real estate investment trusts (REIT), or to divest timberland management of investments completely. In addition, the low softwood stumpage prices during this time likely influenced decisions of landowners and managers that may have played a role in the variability of cost of forestry practices. Labor issues had a role in increased planting costs in recent years as cost per seedling to plant remains higher than costs observed before highs observed in 2018. Further, diesel and other petroleum products increased in price between 2020 and 2022, with the average annual price of crude oil in 2022 up approximately 141 percent compared to the annual average in 2020. Likewise, raw material costs have increased since the 2020 questionnaire. This can be attributed to many situations including the Russian-Ukraine war, extended COVID-19 shutdowns in China, and loss of capacity across many industries. Such events have had and still are having an impact on the cost of timber marking as solvents used in paints have increased by upwards of 150 percent over the last 2 years, causing the cost of tree marking paint to increase.

Adam Maggard, Extension Specialist, Harry E. Murphy Associate Professor, Forestry, Wildlife, and Environment, Auburn University; and Jeremy Natzke, Graduate Research Assistant, Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point

New December 2023, Costs & Trends of Southern Forestry Practices 2022, FOR-2148