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simply supplying their own needs, farmers owning woodland could sell 

 two thirds of the products, either to other farmers or to other indus- 

 tries. Since the marketing of products will follow the natural economic 

 trend, farmers who do not own wood-lots will suffer from lack of ade- 

 quate timber supplies as keenly as any other class of the population. 



WOOD AS A CROP 



The enterprise of producing wood as a crop for Illinois land is sub- 

 ject to the same physical and economic conditions as govern the grow- 

 ing of agricultural crops, fruits, or live stock. 



The profits to be derived from wood production depend upon the 

 price of the products on the market, the continued demand for these 

 products, the cost of harvesting and marketing the crop, and, finally, 

 upon the productiveness of the crops themselves compared with the 

 cost incident to growing them. 



Wood as a crop requires the practically exclusive use of land for 

 a long period of years. In theory, land devoted to wood crops should 

 remain in woodlands. The devotion of land to this crop, therefore, 

 means its withdrawal from agricultural production, just as the clearing 

 of woodlands means the withdrawal of land from wood production. 

 When woodland is cleared for farming, the expense of the operation is 

 often heavy enough to absorb all the revenue derived from the crop of 

 timber which is cut at the time, thus reducing the value of the woodland 

 as such to zero, but putting it in condition to realize presumably higher 

 values for farm crop production. 



Since both agricultural and horticultural crops require a very high 

 proportion of labor annually to grow, harvest, and market them, and 

 the amount of this labor is for the most part determined not by the 

 abundance of the crop but by the area which it occupies — especially 

 for field crops, it follows that with successively poorer grades of .soil, 

 or with lessened productiveness or increased costs per acre, a point is 

 soon reached where the costs absorb all the income and the use of such 

 lands for food crops leads to progressive impoverishment of the soil 

 and of the owner, resulting in ultimate abandonment. 



By contrast, in forest crop ])roduction the cost of labor and annual 

 cultivation is reduced to a remarkably low point. Natural processes 

 need only to be successfully initiated by the establishment of the crop 

 and its later protection from destructive agencies and the stand develops 

 with a minimum of attention. This great reduction of cash outlay and 

 labor costs permits the use for wood crops of practically every acre of 



