Why Plant Pine?

Why Plant Pine?

“Why plant pine?” This is a question often asked by landowners when it is recommended that a piece of land be reforested. The reasons are quite simple. The demand for pine lumber for construction and pine pulpwood for paper is steadily increasing with our population growth. The land base on which we grow trees is steadily shrinking which means that we must more fully utilize the forest land that is available. For almost a decade, our annual cut of pine timber has been greater than the annual growth.

An example of the demand for 1 pine is the production of pulpwood There are now eight pulp mills in the State of Virginia. The com-i bined 24 hour pulping capacity of i

these mills totals 5,357 tons of j pulpwood. An example of this' daily capacity is a pulp mill which uses 1,500 cords of wood per day If 500 cords were deducted for hardwood and chips, 1,000 cords of round pine wood are needed per production day. This means that every minute around the clock and throughout the year, 7 tenths of a cord of round pine wood is needed and used by the mill During any one hour period 42 cords of wood are used. This wood amounts to the entire crop on one acre of 15 year old planted loblolly pine. A l1^ cord truck load of pulpwood, representing the annual growth on an acre of planted pine, would last 2 minutes at the mill.

It was not so long ago that skeptics were predicting that we would shortly have so many pines that the market would be flooded. This has not occurred, and, fortunately, not everyone believed these predictions. Many individuals and forest industries have large reforestation programs underway, and these reforested lands will soon be