Yearbook of Agriculture 1949 



which contains half of the 44 million 

 acres of forest land in the naval stores 

 belt. In Florida, one-half of the land 

 is still without fire protection and some 

 3 million acres are in need of planting. 

 Fire protection and stocking are some- 

 what better in the naval stores section 

 of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. 

 Forest management in the region is 

 of great complexity. The forester does 

 not merely harvest ripe trees; he main- 

 tains the flow of a wide variety of prod- 

 ucts naval stores, pulpwood, ties, logs, 

 poles, piling, cattle. For localized areas 

 in the southern pine region, particular- 

 ly in the heavy rough of Florida, to get 

 protection he usually must burn the 

 underbrush every few years, and the 

 burning, turpentining, timber cutting, 

 and grazing all must be scheduled 

 as to time and location so that the 

 owner will realize the maximum net 

 income from his forest property. 



FOREST MANAGEMENT in the area is 

 still dominated by naval stores but less 

 than before. The first efforts at turpen- 

 tining second-growth trees several dec- 

 ades ago were often ruinous. A descrip- 

 tion of an operation in 1911 says that 

 trees as small as 5 inches in diameter 

 were turpentined, as many "faces" 

 were placed on each tree as the space 

 would allow and the faces were started 

 high enough to avoid any bending 

 over, and the wounds or "streaks" were 

 an inch in depth and height. After 5 

 years about half the trees were dead. 

 The timber was cut and the area was 

 abandoned. 



Foresters and leaders of the naval 

 stores industry, seriously alarmed over 

 the threat to future timber supplies 

 caused by the premature and careless 

 turpentining, in 1924 sent a commis- 

 sion to France and Spain to study the 

 methods used there. 



This constructive attitude and tech- 

 nical improvements developed by early 

 research workers brought considerable 

 progress in conservation. Substitution 

 of the cup for the "box" chopped in 

 the base of the tree reduced windthrow 

 and damage to the trees by surface 



fires. It also reduced waste of gum and 

 improved its quality. Conversion of the 

 industry to more conservative chipping 

 practices gave higher sustained pro- 

 duction of gum, lowered mortality and 

 windthrow, and increased the working 

 life of the surviving trees. The practices 

 were demonstrated on a large scale in 

 national forests in Florida, where pro- 

 visions written into the leases required 

 producers to use methods that reduced 

 damage to the trees and also gave the 

 highest yields of gum over a period of 

 several years. 



The Naval Stores Conservation Pro- 

 gram established in 1936 provided for 

 a conservation payment per face to pro- 

 ducers who meet the standards of good 

 practice established by foresters and 

 representatives of the industry. It has 

 been an effective instrument for the 

 introduction of improved methods of 

 turpentining, among them a provision 

 to prohibit tapping of trees under 9 

 inches. Now only a small fraction of 

 all trees tapped are smaller than the 

 recommended size. 



The improvements in woods practice 

 went a long way toward remedying 

 unnecessary wastefulness and destruc- 

 tion of individual trees. But one im- 

 provement only paves the way for 

 others. There remain at least two 

 major opportunities for improvement 

 in turpentining practices raising the 

 low output per man in harvesting of 

 crude gum and better integration of 

 turpentining with timber production 

 through systems of selective cupping in 

 place of the diameter-limit system. 



The output per man is considerably 

 less than it was a century ago. In to- 

 day's scattered stands, which average 

 about 20 or 30 working trees to the 

 acre, the turpentine laborer spends 

 nearly two-thirds of his time walking 

 from tree to tree and only one-third of 

 his time in productive work. Each 

 chipper now tends fewer faces than his 

 predecessors did in the more fully 

 stocked virgin forest. Furthermore, the 

 average turpentined tree is only 10 or 

 11 inches in diameter; and the yield 

 per tree is consequently much lower 



