COLLEGE STATION, Texas — The Texas timber sector has experienced ebbs and flows of supply and demand and other market forces, but new products and opportunities are adding value to trees, said a Texas A&M Forest Service expert.
Fiber grown, managed, harvested, processed and manufactured around the state continues to play a big role in Texas’ economy with a total impact of around $41 billion, and the industry supports more than 172,000 jobs each year, said Eric Taylor, Ph.D., Texas A&M Forest Service silviculturist, Overton. The value of harvested timber consistently ranks seventh as an agricultural commodity for Texas.
Much of the traditional Texas timber industry is located within 43 counties of East Texas. Timber tracts make up around 11.5 million acres of those counties’ nearly 22 million acres, Taylor said.
Texas timber is turned into products ranging from two-by-fours and plywood for home construction to cardboard for boxes, wood for furniture and home furnishings and mass timber for large structural supports.
Texas sawmills produced more than 1.5 billion board feet of lumber in 2022. With each board foot amounting to 12 inches by 12 inches by 1-inch thick, that is enough board feet for typical framing studs to reach the moon and back to Earth. More than 3.1 billion square feet of structural panels, like oriented strand board or plywood and T1-11 siding, was also manufactured from trees harvested in Texas.
There is also an increasing amount of niche-market timber products from Central and West Texas, where, for example, large specimens of native species like mesquite and live oaks are harvested for products like live-edge tables or countertops and command high prices.
“The Texas timber industry has softened in some ways and strengthened in others,” Taylor said. “Some things changed, and some things will likely never change. Timber is still heavily tied to lumber and housing starts, but other products are different. A large pine tree might be worth only $70 to a landowner on the stump while a live-edge slab from a hardwood tree from Central Texas could be worth thousands of dollars.”
New value for Texas timber
The traditional timber market — pulpwood and lumber — is relatively soft for landowners despite relatively high prices at retail stores, Taylor said. Retail lumber prices have softened somewhat since prices skyrocketed during and after the pandemic led to production slowdowns and an uptick in at-home renovations.
But the industry’s efficiency at harvesting and replanting timber tracts fills the demand for pulpwood when acres are thinned once or twice starting at around year 15 to make way for lumber-bound pines to reach maturity at around 28-years old, he said.
Taylor is a proponent of lower initial planting densities, around 500 seedlings per acre, but 900 pine seedlings or more might be planted per acre at the start. Crowding pushes trees to grow straight and tall but they become stressed around 15 years of age. At that time trees are thinned to allow them more access to sun, soil nutrients and water to stay healthy as they grow toward maturity.
The forecast for traditional timber products is positive because of Texas’ relatively strong housing market. Taylor said housing starts were improving and higher than the previous reporting period with around 1,300 new residents estimated to be moving into the state daily.
Exports of lumber, especially to Mexico, continue to be strong as well, he said.
Taylor said traditional products like printing/copy paper are no longer made in Texas, but that the “Amazon-effect” has strengthened the demand for other products like paperboard and cardboard for shipping boxes. Around 2.5 million tons of paper-based container board were manufactured in Texas last year.
“When you buy something from Amazon, those items come in a box, and that box is made out of paperboard,” he said. “Often times even little items come in big boxes. That’s part of the industry that Texas timber has captured.”
New products add value
Cross-laminated mass timbers are another promising new product adding value to trees, Taylor said. Mass timbers are super-strong constructed support beams that are being adopted by architects and engineers in high-rise buildings and commercial structures because of the aesthetic and environmental benefits over other building materials.
Carbon sequestration is another boon for timber landowners, Taylor said.
As larger companies attempt to reduce their carbon footprint, they purchase carbon credits to offset their carbon emissions into the atmosphere. These credits come from working forest lands that are capturing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it as wood.
Carbon sequestration agreements help incentivize proper tending of forests, which might mean removing some trees so others can thrive, conducting prescribed burns to reduce fuels that could lead to wildfire, and controlling invasive, unwanted and/or competing vegetation, Taylor said. Healthier forests pull more carbon out of the atmosphere over the long-term and make more long-lived products than do unhealthy forests.
Sequestering carbon adds value on the front end of the timber cycle, but whether the products are short-lived items like paper or long-lived products like two-by-fours also counts.
“Now there is value added to the entire life of the forest from carbon and pulpwood from management to the end product,” Taylor said.
New opportunities for new landowners
How timber is valued is changing how timber is managed, but population growth is changing how timber will be grown.
Around 5.1 million East Texans own 50 acres or less, and continued land parcellation is shrinking the average size of working forests, Taylor said. Parcellation into smaller and smaller land holdings can impact a tract’s timber management future. Timber harvesters prefer to clear large tracts because of the costs associated with setting up before and packing up after harvest.
The Texas A&M Forest Service is working with landowners in these smaller tracts to overcome these “economy of scale” limitations and combine smaller tracts into a larger aggregate tract that is managed in unison, he said.
Taylor said better management results in healthier forests and more vigorous trees that can handle stressors like drought and be less susceptible to disease and pests like boring beetles. Drought and competition with too many trees and understory can stress mismanaged timber tracts, which opens the door for bark beetles or wildfire to finish the job.
Carbon sequestration and better harvest values are good incentives for neighbors to work together, he said.
“The economy of scale works against landowners with smaller tracts because it generally takes 100 acres to attract contractors to do the work,” he said. “Pooling together makes a larger neighborhood tract more attractive.
“We are working to educate landowners about their options and help them navigate the changes within the industry. A lot of these changes add value, landowners just need to know their options.”
Go to https://texasforestinfo.tamu.edu for numerous applications related to forest management including My Land Management Connector to connect with neighbors, service providers and Texas A&M Forest Service experts.
–Adam Russell
Texas A&M AgriLife Communications
