some for reasons of sentiment. 
are absentee owners. 
A major handicap, as with the farmer owner, is 
lack of forestry know-how—of how to grow, harvest, 
and market timber to best advantage. Most small 
owners and operators lack the experience to per- 
form or supervise these tasks expertly. They need 
much technical information and_ on-the-ground 
assistance in forest management. Here there is 
constructive opportunity for public aid on a greatly 
enlarged scale. 
Small size, of itself, also entails handicaps. Small 
holdings, particularly if badly depleted, may be 
commensurate neither with the income needs of 
the owner nor with the labor and other investments 
he might put into them. Small size usually means 
that the operator grows, harvests, and markets 
timber as a side line. As a seller, he often is un- 
able to reach good markets. With small output 
and returns, there is little incentive to practice good 
timber management. 
The great majority 
The cooperative association long used by farmers 
in overcoming the handicaps of smallness has appli- 
cation to forestry. Since the first “forest coopera- 
tive” was organized in this country, more than 40 
years ago, the movement has shown sporadic 
growth. Many associations have failed. A few have 
had long and successful histories. During the past 
10 years or so there appear to have been some 57 
forest-cooperative associations of different types, but 
engaged chiefly in marketing farm timber. Most 
are in the Lake and other northern States where 
farm cooperatives have prospered. Some handle 
timber only; some, as a side line to farm commo- 
dities. At least one processes the timber of mem- 
bers before selling the products. Some also provide 
timber-management service and require adherence 
to good cutting practices.*6 
Forest cooperatives, given needed encouragement 
by public agencies, should help to meet the prob- 
lems of the small forest owner. 
Closely associated with small size is low income. 
’ There is many a small property, farm and nonfarm, 
whose owner or operator is hard-pressed financially 
and which has been picked over for every bit of 
income it will yield. In most of these cases the 
forest is shorn of merchantable timber and will not 
produce much for many years. Meanwhile the 
poverty of the owner perpetuates the poverty of 
“Fuller discussion is given in Reappraisal Report 6, For- 
est Cooperatives in the United States. U. S. Dept. Agr., 
Forest Service. 1947. 
his forest; he cannot afford to postpone what little 
income there is while growing stock is being 
built up. 
Such very low-income forest properties, it is 
roughly estimated, total about 65 million acres or 
one-fourth of the commercial land in small hold- 
These are concentrated in the more depressed 
rural areas, where natural and industrial resources 
are limited: the Piedmont and Coastal Plain of 
the South, the southern and central highlands from 
the Appalachians to the Ozarks, and the northern 
Lake States. 
There are no simple solutions to the tough prob- 
lem of rehabilitating these small, low-income prop- 
erties in the face of the economic pressures which 
keep them depleted. Rehabilitation in any event 
will be slow and will involve recreating the people’s 
whole resource base so as to raise their total income. 
In the more depressed areas, it is improbable that 
growing stock can be restored while there is still 
a heavy population on the land and the forests 
remain in private ownership. 
Absentee ownership is another serious obstacle.47 
When an owner leaves his property unoccupied or 
turns it over to a tenant, good forest management 
is doubly difficult to attain. 
Despite the poor showing by small holdings as a 
class, there is opportunity for forestry on a large 
proportion of them. But the present picture is 
largely one of mismanagement, of exploitation on 
millions of small properties adding up to exploita- 
tion on a grand scale. ‘The picture reveals serious 
handicaps, economic and physical, to satisfactory 
forestry. It reveals the heavy handicap of sheer 
lack of knowledge of forestry and its possibilities. 
Yet if private forestry is to do the job it needs to 
do, it must prove itself on these small holdings as 
well as on the larger ones—for in these is three- 
fourths of the private commercial forest. The 
small property is indeed the crux of our forest prob- 
lem. 
ings. 
Some Economic Factors Affecting Private 
Forestry 
The job in private forestry is one of getting perm- 
anent sustained-yield management that will not 
only profit the owner but also serve the public 
interest. The public’s part of the job is largely a 
“In the 26 States east of the Mississippi River, where 
nearly three-fourths of all farm woodland is concentrated, 
36 percent of the farms are operated by tenants. 
96 Miscellaneous Publication 668, U. S. Department of Agriculture 
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