/ FARM FORESTRY IN THE LAKE STATES 25 
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about 48 acres in good farm woods (aside from sparsely wooded 
pasture), made up of maple, basswood, elm, oak, and hickory. The 
woodland is still in better condition than in most other parts of 
southern Wisconsin, but improper cutting is rapidly depleting it and, 
together with grazing, has already greatly lowered its productivity. 
The Yuba community is fortunate in having a small, permanent 
wood-using industry, including two well-equipped stationary lumber 
niills, several tie mills, a cheese-box plant, a bowling-pin mill, a furni- 
ture factory, and a lath mill. The principal outlet for marketed 
timber at the present time, however, is the 40-odd portable sawmills 
and tie mills within the area. 
Timber is marketed largely through tie contractors and this is an 
important cause of low average timber returns. At present, the timber 
cut annually from the good woodlands and the sparsely wooded pas- 
ture lands of a typical group of farms amounts to about 5,000 board 
feet and 16 cords per farm. At $10 per thousand and $4.50 per cord, 
it is worth $122. It is reasonable to expect that farmers could im- 
prove these unsatisfactory conditions and increase their incomes 
through cooperative effort in selling sawlogs and other marketable 
products and at the same time improve their woods. 
Studies in the Yuba area indicate that an efficient woodland asso- 
ciation could be made up of about 600 members, or 20 percent of the 
total number of farmers in the area. An association of this size 
would control nearly 29,000 acres of good woodland, with a stand 
amounting to some 75 million board feet of saw timber and 288,000 
cords of other usable wood. 
To keep the woodlands productive it would be necessary to restrict 
the annual cut per farm to about 4,000 board feet of saw timber 
and 15 cords of other wood. This would mean reducing the present 
cut by about 15 percent. However, with proper marketing the smaller 
cut would provide a greater cash income than is obtained at present. 
By carefully seeking the best markets—selling the veneer logs at 
$25 to $50 per thousand, better sawlogs at $20 te $25, and marketing 
only tops and smaller cuts for ties and posts—a cooperative should 
be able to obtain for its members a net return (aiter deducting 
association expenses) of $16 per M feet on the sawlog material, or 
more than 50 percent above the average price new obtained. This net 
return plus the value of the cordwood products used on the farms— 
15 cords at $4.50—would total $131.50 per member. This would 
indicate an increase of 8 percent over current income per farm, while 
the volume cut would be 15 percent less. 
Theoretically, there would be a further advantage in having the 
cooperative operate a mill and sell processed products, since returns 
could be increased thereby to as much as $157 per member. Owning, 
renting, or contracting for facilities for manufacturing lumber and 
other sawn products would also overcome the farmer’s greatest handi- 
caps in timber marketing—having to sell any part of the timber to 
the present portable sawmills with their technical inefficiency, and 
having to deal with a limited market for unprocessed timber. 
Yet as a practical proposition, such an underiaking would involve 
greater risks than appear justifiable under present conditions in the 
Yuba area, where a large number of small mills and other wood- 
processing plants are already established and widely distributed. It 
