One of the major realisations I have made over the past 10 years is the complete failure of forestry and timber markets to take any responsibility for their own future.
Here is just one recent example:
Good Day Dr. Gordon Bradbury,
Hope you can introduce some seller or loggers milling Tasmania Blackwood Logs or lumber etc,
Sir we are Hong Kong based company and looking for looking for Tasmanian Blackwood logs 40cm plus in diameter to import if possible, 1-2×40′ containers, CIF Incheon, South Korea.
Will appreciate if you could send us your complete offer with certificate (FSC/PEFC),, provide some photos for checking the quality and shape on logs, lumbers and veneers, MOq, terms of payment, terms of inspection, estimated delivery time, yard location etc.
Thank you so very much for your kind help
Kind Regards
I get regular emails and SMS messages from people wanting to get their hands on cheap blackwood.
When I try to engage these people in my quest, which is to get the market to take responsibility and support, encourage and reward Tasmanian farmers to grow quality wood for the future, I get excuses of why they cannot help!
Here is one of my standard questions I ask these people:
Q: Do you care about the future of YOUR industry/business?
A: Moan, complain, apologise, blame others, too busy, etc., etc., etc…
Is the forestry/timber market so short-sighted, corrupt and stupid that it is willing to destroy its own future?
It would appear so!!
Log traders, furniture makers, craftspeople, luthiers, cabinet makers, architects, builders, retailers, festival organisers,etc.
Every one of these professions/trades seems to have no interest in their own future.
I don’t know of any other primary industry in Australia that has such a fatalistic attitude. Every other primary industry, beef, sheep, poultry, dairy, vegetables, fruit, grain, etc. all keep their growers uptodate, supported and informed with all the relevant information they need to keep these industries running smoothly and efficiently.
Not the forestry/timber market!
Yes forestry has long investment periods and some other unique characteristics, but this means that the market has to work that much harder to ensure its future.
Having plundered the worlds forests the forestry/timber market seems determined to do a “Thelma and Louise” and accelerate over the cliff to extinction.
And for those log merchants wanting cheap blackwood, all the existing resource in Tasmania is committed. Most of it comes for public native forest for the domestic welfare forestry sector. A small amount is salvaged from private property.
Here’s another way of looking at the issue. How many companies are there in Australia and around the world that use Tasmanian blackwood timber or would like too? Dozens? Hundreds? How many of these companies actively support and encourage the growing of Tasmanian blackwood? My guess! None!! Ziltch!!
I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Very few Tasmanians are planting blackwood for the future and the major reason is the careless attitude of the marketplace. The marketplace has a death wish!!
People I speak to who are interested in planting blackwood I tell them the truth – no one wants you to grow quality blackwood timber for the future. Nobody! No one will support or encourage you. In fact many people are actively working against you!
Why commit to a 30+ year investment growing quality timber when the marketplace couldn’t care less?
National Forest Strategy for Australia 1986
A trip down memory lane (another dead end street!)
In purging my bookshelves recently I came across this publication. As I understand it this was the very first National Forest Industry Strategy/Plan for Australia.
It was 1986 and the forestry wars were well underway in many parts of the country. They still are!!!
It was 1986 and the forest industry was dominated by State Governments who ran the industry as a rural welfare program. They still do!! The privatisation of Government softwood plantations was still a few years away.
It was 1986 and the Hawke/Keating Government had been in Canberra for 3 years with an enormous reform agenda that would ultimately lead to the sale of Government plantations and the corporatisation of State Government businesses including forest agencies.
Significant change was coming to the forest industry, but from reading this strategy you wouldn’t know it.
The 1986 NFSA was a simple document running to a mere 17 pages (10 pages if Appendices are excluded).
The Strategy contains almost no background or supporting information, but despite this absence 34 recommendations are crammed into its few short pages.
There is no budget. There are no deadlines. There are no measureable, objective performance criteria. No one is held accountable or responsible.
There is a recommendation to review the Strategy every 5 years! That never happened despite the fact that the Hawke/Keating Government would be in power for another 10 years!
The Governments own reform agenda made much of the Strategy redundant.
Thirty four years have passed since this Strategy appeared. Much has changed in the forest industry in that time, and yet many things remain the same.
Dozens of other forest industry plans, strategies and reports have been written in the intervening 34 years. Most of them remain on library shelves collecting dust just like the 1986 Strategy.
The 1986 Forest Industry Strategy really did set the standard for forest industry dusty, dead end streets.
The forest industry in Australia remains in limbo land; unable to decide whether it is welfare or commercial.
My copy of this important historical document shall be returned to the bookshelf to collect dust for a few more decades.
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