29 March 2011, AFO news - A manifold group of 16 million private forest owners possess about 60% of all the forests in the European Union. It has been estimated that 35% of the annual net increment in these forests is not utilized at the moment. Mobilizing these wood reserves is crucial for increasing the use of renewable energy sources.
As a part of the AFO-project (Activating Private Forest Owners to Increase Forest Fuel Supply) an extensive forest owner enquiry was carried out in France, Latvia, Slovenia and The United Kingdom.
All together almost 1000 forest owners answered questions concerning e.g. status of their forestry and willingness to increase harvesting activities.
The enquiry pointed out three main challenges:
1. Small size of the forest holdings.
The average size of a forest holding is just a few hectares in many countries. Due to the small size, the forest holding is not considered to be an actual investment. The bigger the forest holding the more actively it is being utilized.
2. Forest owners no longer live close to their forests.
It is typical that a forest owner is not even aware of the location of their woodland. If the owner has no bond to the forest, it is likely that the woodland is not actively managed and harvested.
3. Increasing proportion of forest owners is aged and retired citizens.
In the countries where the age distribution is more balanced (the Eastern European countries) the willingness to increase wood fuel supply was remarkably higher.
Small-scale forestry has various objectives
The most important factor regulating the volume of wood fuel supply is the correct price. Also many owners have decided to preserve their woodland for other purposes such as recreation, hunting or biodiversity protection.
Firewood production for forest owner's own use seems to be the main objective of forestry for the majority of forest owners. As the demand for wood fuel has increased remarkably during the last few years, it has created new and extending markets for small diameter wood. Hence, information about wood fuel markets should be delivered frequently to the forest owners.
How to overcome these barriers?
Forest owners should be encouraged to form clusters providing shared ownership, communal forestry operations or wood fuel supply to a plant.
Bigger units provide better treatment and higher level of utilization. Thus through regulatory taxation and legislation it is wiser to concentrate forest ownership to larger units.
Forest owners should be informed about their forests and the potential they possess as a source of renewable resources and income.
Up-to-date information about the regional wood markets should be available to all forest owners as well as information about service providers for outsourcing forestry operations.
