That’s a great question! Like any great question, the answer is often “it depends” (on a few key variables). If we re-frame the question to look at the aggregate growth rate of merchantable sawtimber volume in the entire deciduous forest, there’s research to help us answer this one.
According to the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station (Report # NE183), our Northern Hardwoods and Allegheny Hardwoods forests-types – on average sites/soils – will grow between 250-310 boardfeet per acre per year depending on stage of forest development (maturity); stand density (crowding) and average tree quality.
See the yellow chart.
For those who prefer discussions in terms of annual percentages, consider this simplified example: a landowner with a well-managed, 90-year-old Allegheny Hardwood-type forest, containing 7,500 boardfeet of sawtimber, growing at 300 boardfeet per acre per year equates to 4% annual growth in sawtimber volume.
Timber Markets In Perspective
The most recent quarterly price information for both hardwood standing timber and hardwood export logs sends a clear message that “it depends on the species”. Below, you’ll see the price changes for certain species and products for the first quarter of 2023. Although another month remains in the second quarter, sporadic recent information points to continued strengthening in prices for red oak, white oak and cherry of late, while maple prices have been declining in recent weeks.
We hope you might find some of these trends (below) as interesting as we did. In this issue of your Woodland News, we’ve focused some energy on detecting correlations between standing timber price trends for a given species and U.S. export log prices for that same species. For instance, you’ll notice prices for maple export logs and maple standing timber tend to move in concert. Meanwhile, red oak exhibits quite a divergent trend. One reason for these differing trends is that export markets vary by species, country and end-use. Another factor involves species and product specialization and segmentation in foreign demand, which can preclude “apples-to-apples” comparisons of two species. For instance, at any given time, a surge in Canadian demand for small (low-priced) maple logs may coincide with a rapid decrease in Chinese demand for large (high-priced) maple logs, along with a surge in Chinese demand for large (high-priced) red oak logs.
While the general, long-term trend for white oak logs and standing timber has been rising (see below), the quarter-to-quarter correlation is imperfect. Cherry markets illustrate a similar imperfect correlation, while exhibiting a declining price-trend following the Great Recession. Thankfully, our regional hardwood forest grow in mixed stands with a wide array of species. This provides you a measure of diversification. Additionally, even seemingly-weak price trends for a given species often experience periodic, localized up-swings, creating windows of opportunity for forest landowners. These are only a small sample of the trends FORECON’s team follows. When you’re ready to have a discussion about your property, we encourage you to invite our team to the table.
