OWNERSHIP OF FOREST LAND AND TIMBER 



305 



where timber growing, production, and market 

 factors have been relatively favorable, but all 

 sections have shared in the advance of industrial 

 forestry. 



Industry faces certain problems in further 

 expansion, such as increasing difficulty in acquir- 

 ing timber tracts of substantial size and a large 

 increase in forest land prices. In some areas, 

 moreover, there is considerable local opposition 

 toward large company acquisition. The pulp 

 industry in some cases has attempted to meet this 

 problem by maintaining a market for wood pro- 

 duced by farmers and other small owners, by 

 selling sawtimber produced on company lands 

 to small local sawmills or other local wood users, 

 and by providing technical forestry assistance to 

 small landowners and timber operators. 



Although industry holdings comprise only 13 

 percent of the commercial forests, they include 

 some of the most accessible, productive, and well- 

 managed forests — a significant part of the Nation's 

 timber resom"ces. These industrial ownerships, 

 therefore, must be counted on to supply a sizable 

 share of the Nation's future wood requirements. 



Forest industry may be of even larger signifi- 

 cance through demonstration, education, and 

 assistance to other private forest landowners who 

 supply most of the raw material for wood-using 

 plants. The forest industries also are in a position 

 to influence the cutting practices of the independ- 

 ent logging operators who cut timber on farm and 

 other private forest ownerships for delivery to 

 wood-manufacturing plants. 



FARM AND OTHER PRIVATE 

 OWNERSHIPS 



The characteristics of the owners of farm and 

 miscellaneous "other" private holdings, the forest 

 problems they face, and the opportunities open 

 to them in general differ from those of public 

 and forest industry owners. Farm and other 

 private ownerships include crop farmers and 

 livestock ranchers, business and professional 

 people, housewives, wage earners, mining and 

 land holding companies, and a wide variety of 

 other owners. Some of these owners manage their 

 lands for the production of stumpage. Some 

 farmers operate small sawmills but derive most 

 of their income from nontimber sources and hence 

 are included in the "farm" category. Although 

 most farm and other private owners are interested 

 primarily in occupations other than timber growing 

 and manufacture, they represent the principal 

 class of forest ownership in terms of area and 

 potential yield. 



Farm and Other Private Ownerships 

 Include Three-fifths of Commer- 

 cial Forest Land 



The commercial forest land in farms and private 

 ownerships other than forest industries amounts to 

 296 million acres, or 61 percent of the total com- 

 mercial forest area in the United States and 

 Coastal Alaska (table 163). 



Farm holdings, which include lands owned 

 both by farm operators and by other private 

 owners who lease lands to farm operators, repre- 

 sent the largest class of forest ownership. Farm 

 forests total 165 million acres, or 34 percent of the 

 total commercial forest land.^^ "Other" private 

 ownerships include 131 million acres, or nearly 

 as much as the farm holdings. 



Nearly half of the farm and other private 

 holdings, 143 million acres, is in the South (table 

 175). There is also a large concentration of 128 

 million acres of such private holdings in the North. 

 The western regions include only 25 million acres 

 of farm and other private holdings. The acreage 

 of private ownerships in Coastal Alaska is negli- 

 gible. 



Farm holdings are particularly numerous in the 

 Central and South Atlantic Regions, where they 

 account for more tlian half of the commercial 

 forest land (fig. 99). In the Northeastern States, 

 "other" private owners hold more than half of the 

 commercial forest area (fig. 100). 



Farm and Other Private Holdings 

 Mostly Small 



There are approximately 3.4 million farm forest 

 ownerships in the United States and 1.1 million 

 other private ownerships, or a total of 4,487,000 

 separate holdings (table 175). About 57 percent 

 of these holdings are in the North, 40 percent in 

 the South, and 3 percent in the West. In both 

 North and South, the number of farm ownerships 

 considerably exceeds that of other private owners, 

 whereas they are about equal in the West. 



"Small" forest holdings of less than 5,000 acres 

 in farm and "other" private ownerships aggregate 

 about 259 million acres, or 88 percent of all com- 

 mercial forest lands in these ownership classes 

 (table 176). "Medium" holdings of 5,000 to 

 50,000 acres of forest land aggregate 20 million 

 acres. "Large" ownerships of more than 50,000 

 acres contain 16 million acres of forest land. 



The farm ownerships on a nationwide basis 

 average only 49 acres in size. The average farm 



5' An increase in estimated area of farm ownership from 

 139 million acres in the 1945 Reappraisal to 165 million 

 acres, and a decrease of "other" private holdings from 

 155 to 131 million acres, is believed to be attributable 

 largely to changes in definitions of farms and farm wood- 

 lands. 



