O/T Stumpage rates

Might be if you guys south of the border would stop bitching about the importation of something you don't have.

Kent:

Right now $65.00/cord of fir is pretty good. Ifn your woodlot was more spruce and pine, then you could expect probably btween $85.00 to $95.00/cord. Unfortunately, I am in the same situation, most of my softwood is about 50% fir and the rest a mix of spruce3 and pine, with the pine being less than 20%.

As for the hardwood - especially maple, I would expect much more than $25.00/cord. Unless he is selling to the mills for either chips (which is a total waste of this resource and he should re-evaluate), then the $25.00/cord would be ok for chips, but should be around $40.00/cord for veneer.

Also, you may want to consider contacting local firewood contractors and see what they are paying for tree length hardwood. The round rate has increased to almost $125.00/cord and $150.00 to $175.00/cord split. There seems to be a dearth of hardwood the last couple of years.

This also depends on which Marketing board you are with.

Here in the Dieppe area, the SENB is a little more tight than the Sussex area board and maybe around Fredricton and such.

Hope this helps a bit.

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scotty

Scotty:

Hi there! Yup, Em is letting me do a few more things now. I get to play on the puter every day for a bit.

As for heating the house. Well that is how I do it. I burn about 4-5 cords of mixed hard and soft. Species will vary as will size. I have 20 acres of woodlot, and whatever needs to be cleaned up, cut down, thinned etc., becomes the winter heating materials. I burn pine/spruce/fir/alder/grey birch/white or wire birch/ yellow birch/paper birch as well as the different species of maple, poplar and ash that I have. Anything that I consider useful I try to salvage for use in my shop. I unfortunately do not have enough of the different hardwoods to be commercially viable - maybe in 20 years or so..... but then that will be for me kids.

I don't much like getting up on the soapbox, but sometimes it just happens. The lumber issue and the beef issue just burns me up... oh well

Hope all is well and you are keeping busy!

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Eric:

Here in Canada we use stumpage as a term to describe standing trees on a woodlot or Crown Land section. It is used to determine what a particular species is worth to a contractor to harvest the trees in a commercial operation.

It varies across Canada as to what stumpage is worth. Some provinces regulate the stumpage price as a minimum. New Brunswick (NB) lets the market place determine the price. We do have things called Marketing Boards which origainally were groups of people such as myself who banded together to sell their privately owned timber from their privately held woodlots. Mostly farmers and small land owners. This was done to try to guarantee that woodlot owners would be able to sell their wood before the big compainies harvested from Crown Lands. This would keep the market place fair.

That is what the so-called Softwood War between the US and Canada is about - something called a subsidy. Unfortunately, no province in Canada actually subsidizes forestry. It is mostly determined by the markets. Even in the provinces that set the stumpage rates, it is not a subsidy, but a minimum price that a contractor must pay to cut wood on Crown Land (Govenment or the people's land).

As for subsidies, the US has more subsidies for it's forestry sector than Canada ever thought of having. Also on top of that, right now there is what?, 3 to 4 BILLION DOLLARS -- US sitting in the US treasury collected from CANADIAN producers in what is called a Anti-Dumping Tarriff. This money is slated for the US Lumber Companies - most of the Global Conglomerates - who somehow feel that we Canadaians are somehow cheating the US taxpayer.

Funny though, now that they put in this Anti-Dumping Tarriff, the cost of building a home in the US has risen by an average of $3.00/foot for the last couple of years. I wonder who is making the profit there ??? US LUMBER COMPANIES!!!!

Sorry for the soap box, but this anti-dumping malarky affects even the small woodlot owner. Also, the NAFTA Resolution Tribunal which is comprised 50/50 of US/Canadian appointees, has determined at least a half a dozen times that this Anti-Dumping Tarriff is clearly illegal. They have also determined that there is no basis for the Tarriff as Canada does not provide subsidies to the forestry industry.

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