Regional Farm Bill Field Hearing

Regional Farm Bill Field Hearing
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
Publisher:
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Local Specialty and Niche Market Potential

Local Specialty and Niche Market Potential
Author: Alyson Wade
Publisher:
Total Pages: 109
Release: 2015
Genre: Forest products industry
ISBN:

Small landowners in the state of Oregon find it difficult to be competitive with larger companies to provide traditional forest products to consumers. Additionally, many landowners hope to be profitable from their land, but are not necessarily interested in or have the capability to harvest large tracts of timber. Specialty and niche forest products can potentially offer opportunities for many of Oregon's small landowners to improve stewardship and profitability from their land. To assess aspects of the current local specialty and niche forest products markets, interviews and surveys were conducted. Local area experts were interviewed to understand current market dynamics, a mail survey was administered to landowners and manufacturers in Clackamas and surrounding counties in Oregon, and a consumer survey was administered to attendees of a Local Forest Products Market. Topics that these surveys addressed included interest in specialty and niche forest products, barriers for landowners and manufacturers, the role of forest certification and forest stewardship at the local level, and what additional resources landowners and manufacturers would find most helpful. Results show that landowners, manufacturers, and consumers desire a stronger local economy and agree that forest stewardship is beneficial to the economy, society, and the environment. While landowners and manufacturers are most interested in pursuing markets for building materials and specialty woods, consumers are most interested in purchasing forest based foods and handicraft items. Landowners and manufacturers agree that the largest barriers to improving the local forest products sector are government regulations, and both agree that more marketing resources would be the most helpful. Some potential economic development projects for the region as identified by the results of this work include developing more outlets for regional forest products sales, development of educational materials for the public and forest sector employees, and the adoption of agroforestry practices to help landowners diversify forestlands and income.

US forest sector greenhouse mitigation potential and implications for nationally determined contributions

US forest sector greenhouse mitigation potential and implications for nationally determined contributions
Author: Christina Van Winkle
Publisher: RTI Press
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2017-05-30
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

Countries globally are committing to achieve future greenhouse gas emissions reductions to address our changing climate, as outlined in the Paris Agreement from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties. These commitments, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), are based on projected anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions levels across all sectors of the economy, including land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) activities. Projecting LULUCF emissions is uniquely challenging, and the uncertainty of future LULUCF emissions could require additional mitigation efforts in the land use sectors to reduce the risk of NDC noncompliance. The objectives of this paper are to provide critical information on what forest sector mitigation activities are currently underway in the United States on private lands, review recent literature estimates of the mitigation potential from these activities (and associated economic costs), identify gaps in the literature where additional analytical work is needed, and provide recommendations for targeted mitigation strategies should US emissions approach or exceed targeted post-2020 NDC levels.