The role of industrial plantations in future global fibre supplies

D. Pandey and J. Ball

Devendra Pandey is Director, Forest Survey of India.
Jim Ball is Senior Forestry Officer, Forest Plantation and Genetic Resource Group. FAO, Rome.

The predicted reduced future production of industrial wood from natural forests, owing to a combination of factors including changes in land use patterns, depletion of the resource or withdrawal of forest areas from production for the provision of environmental services, has been referred to elsewhere in this issue. In the light of the updating and analysis of forest plantation data for the Global Fibre Supply Study (GFSS), this article examines the ways in which forest plantations are likely to contribute to future needs for industrial roundwood.

Plantations are forest stands (of 0.5 ha or more, as defined by FAO) which have been established by planting and/or seeding in the process of afforestation or reforestation. Historically, the purpose of forest plantations was to supplement the supply of industrial wood from natural forests. European countries and the United States established such plantations from early in the eighteenth century. The extension of plantation forestry to most other countries, and advances in plantation silviculture and management, however, have taken place in the current century.

An industrial poplar plantation (Populus simonigra) in China. Note the low-fertility sandy soil

The plantations resource described in the Global Fibre Supply Study (GFSS) are those established with the objective of supplying industrial roundwood which, from the 1950s until the 1970s, were large blocks, usually of even-aged trees of a single, often introduced species. In many countries trees were directly established by the state forest service. They generally had a single objective, the provision of industrial roundwood, although the methods of establishment and management may have been constrained by environmental considerations or social requirements such as the creation of employment. Both in the tropics and in temperate regions such plantation programmes were increasingly surrounded by controversy and popular resistance, owing to environmental impacts such as the clearing of high forest or soil disturbance or social impacts such as loss of rights of access or usufruct.

The area of plantations of fast-growing exotic species expanded rapidly in many countries in the 1920s and 1930s, for example South Africa, New Zealand and Chile. Immediately after the Second World War, Japan started a massive plantation programme of about 1 million ha annually to reforest forest areas denuded in the war. Korea initiated a similar programme at that time. China launched a large-scale afforestation programme to increase forest cover after the 1949 revolution. Many tropical developing countries increased tree planting after the end of the colonial regimes in the 1950s and 1960s in response to an increased awareness of the need for fuel and industrial wood as a part of overall rural development activities. The total plantation area in tropical countries in 1950 was estimated to be only 0.68 million ha, most of which being the area under teak in Indonesia (Lanly in FAO, 1982).

The plantation boom in the tropics, however, occurred in the late 1970s when community and social forestry projects were launched in a number of countries. The social benefits of forest plantations gained strong ground, particularly in tropical Asia and tropical Africa, as people planted trees outside the forest, in private farms, on community land and other non-forest lands. Besides the market impetus arising from the shortage of fuelwood, smallwood and fodder, external financial support by a large number of donor agencies played a key role in stimulating the activity. During the 1970s many developed countries also expanded their tree planting for industrial roundwood in response to forecast shortages of raw material.

TABLE 1. Global area of industrial forest plantations in 1995

	Total plantation area	Annual establishment rate	Industrial	Industrial area
	('000 ha)	('000 ha)	(%)	('000 ha)
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
Australia	1068	25	100	1068
Canada 1	6080	450	100	6080
Japan	10400	50	100	10400
New Zealand	1480	60	100	1480
Portugal	426	30	100	426
Spain	2170	45	100	2170
United States 2	31300	1000	100	31300
CIS	28300	900	100	28300
Total	81224	2560		81224
NON-TROPICAL DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Algeria	972	100	72	700
Argentina	830	30	84	700
Chile	1747	100	96	1680
China 4	21373	2000	82	17581
Morocco	560	20	60	336
Korea, Rep.	2500	25	80	2000
South Africa	1428	20	94	1340
Swaziland	135	3	96	130
Tunisia	320	20	40	125
Uruguay	348	40	22	78
Total	29241	2258		23970
TROPICAL COUNTRIES 3
Tropical Africa	2434	120	52	1266
Tropical America	5973	230	76	4539
Tropical Asia	19098	1304	45	8594
Total	27505	1654		14399
Grand total	137970	6472		119593

¹ Cumulative area of annual plantation available since 1975.
² Cumulative area of annual plantation since 1960, prior plantations assumed harvested.
³ Total plantation area is the estimated net area calculated by applying reduction factors. All trees planted outside the forest have been assumed to be for non-industrial purposes.
⁴ Plantation area of about 13 million ha for non-wood products (spices, oilseeds, rubber, bamboo, etc.) has been excluded.

Current situation

The area of forest plantations in the world has increased substantially, especially in the past two decades, as noted in the previous section. Uncertainty, however, exists about the reliability of the statistics regarding the reported areas of forest plantations and there is even less certainty concerning the volume of wood produced from them. This uncertainty arises since most countries do not monitor their plantation programmes, either by survey or through permanent growth plots. Some confusion also exists about the definition of plantation.

In many countries the responsible agencies have a tendency to report the planned areas of plantations as if they had been successfully established. Failed and harvested plantations are not deleted from the record, whereas replanting of the failed areas is added to the total. Reported area statistics have to be reduced therefore, using estimated success rates derived from those countries that have done plantation surveys and inventories. Furthermore, countries do not always distinguish which of their plantation programmes have been established for industrial purposes and which for other purposes such as fuelwood supply, except Chile, Argentina and South Africa where the entire plantation area is for industrial use.

Plantations of native species are not differentiated from natural forest in several temperate and developed countries since they are largely regenerated naturally and it is not possible to distinguish those areas where supplementary planting has been done. Some other temperate countries, for example New Zealand, Australia, Spain and Portugal which have substantial plantation areas of exotic species, and Japan, do distinguish and report plantation area figures. On the other hand, statistics from the United States and Canada mention only annual tree planting areas and not the total area of existing plantations. Countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States have not published such reports regularly.

The area figures of industrial forest plantations (excluding most of the European countries), presented in Table 1 and used in the GFSS, are based on the plantation data reported by Pandey in FAO (1995), updated with new figures obtained from countries and from published sources. In view of the reservations described above, these figures should be considered as indicative rather than definitive.

Production of industrial wood from plantations

Knowledge of the annual increment and wood volume production from forest plantations, especially but not only from those in developing countries, is extremely weak. National planning for wood production from plantations in the absence of detailed information on area by species, site conditions, tree age, landownership and plantation management practices is impossible. Reliable growth and yield studies do not exist for several plantation species. In a recent review, the actual yield obtained from tropical plantations in general was found to be very low, often less than 50 percent of their productive capacity and the yield initially planned (Pandey in FAO, 1995). Factors contributing to this situation included: political decisions to expand the gross forest plantation area taken in haste without considering the feasibility in detail and the low priority given to technical aspects, such as matching site with species, controlling the quality of the planting stock, tending and monitoring, protection and research support.

Estimates of the yield of the main plantation species or species groups under normal management practice at rotation age, derived from isolated cases of large-scale industrial plantations in a few countries, along with estimated net area of the species planted are presented in Table 2.

TABLE 2. Growth rates of selected species in large-scale plantations in selected countries

Species	Mean annual increment	Rotation (years)	Country and net species area
	(m3/ha/year)	('000 ha)
Pinus taeda	7	30-40	United States (18000)
P. radiata	20-24	25-30	Chile (1344), New Zealand (1338)
	18	30-40	Australia (700)
P. patula/elliottii	17-20	25-35	South Africa (700)
	16	17-25	Malawi (72)
	15-25	11-13	Swaziland (102)
P. patula/oocarpa	11	18-25	Mozambique (23)
P. caribaea/oocarpa/elliottii	15	20	Brazil (1128)
	10	10-20	Venezuela (396)
P. kesiya	6-10	15-18	Madagascar (75)
Cryptomaria japonica	8	40	Japan (5000)
Eucalyptus	18-20	8-10	Brazil (2717),South Africa (557)
	30	7	Congo (34)
	4-6	8-12	India (3088)
	1-2	8	Burundi (30)
Teak	2.6-3	60	Bangladesh (73)
	2.5	60-70	India (988)
	2-3	60-70	Indonesia (695)
Acacia mangium	20-25	10-15	Malaysia (64)
	20	10	Indonesia (302)

Reliable data on the production of industrial wood from plantations, as distinct from natural forests, are not available from most countries. Some countries, such as South Africa and New Zealand, produce almost 100 percent of their industrial wood from forest plantations. Other countries with a high proportion of industrial wood coming from plantations include: Chile, 95 percent; Spain, 81 percent; Brazil, 60 percent; Argentina, 60 percent; and Japan, 55 percent. As the area of maturing plantations increases, the percentage contribution of industrial wood from them will also increase.

A eucalyptus plantation in Uganda provides both industrial fibre and fuelwood for household energy

Trends and future potential

The trend is for increased production of industrial roundwood from forest plantations. Sedjo (1987) predicted that by the year 2000 half of the industrial wood produced in Latin American countries would come from forest plantations. Indeed, such is the potential production of intensively grown high-yielding plantation trees that in theory the present global demand for pulp could be supplied from an area equivalent to only 1.5 percent of the world's closed forest area (IIED, 1996). Whatever the actual proportion - and this paper has drawn attention to the sad lack of reliable information on forest plantation resources the proportion of industrial roundwood coming from forest plantations will increase rapidly to become a major source of supply in the future as new plantation areas come into production (World Forestry Congress, 1997).

Since the expansion of plantation programmes in the tropics in the 1970s, planners have become more receptive to the need for consultation and the involvement of all concerned parties in plantation programmes, even if this is not yet practiced everywhere. Fewer plantations, even for the provision of industrial roundwood, have been established directly by the state and more are being created by the private sector. While some of those privately owned plantation programmes are even larger, and borrow even more from the methods of growing agricultural monocultures than before, others are smaller, less intensive and more concerned about meeting multiple objectives. The move to "outgrower" schemes for industrial wood supply (under which production is contracted to small-scale producers) is now well established and growing rapidly in many parts of the world.

Owners of small areas of forest have supplied wood processors in Finland, Sweden and the United States for many years. In Finland, for example, more than 60 percent of the forest area is farm forest, while it was 87 percent in former West Germany and about 50 percent in Austria (quoted in Mather, 1990). In Japan, 78 percent of private forest owners are farmers (Anon., 1995a) Owners of small or relatively small areas of forest in the Nordic countries have united in various forms of cooperatives for many years, and this trend is now being encouraged in countries such as France and Japan where there are very large numbers of fragmented forest holdings. Small-scale woodland ownership is a new development in tropical countries.

With the growth of the private sector in wood supply, the role of the state is both to create the right environment for investment while at the same time ensuring that social and economic objectives are met and that negative environmental effects are minimized - or positive impacts enhanced. In the past this has principally beer, through different types of incentives, but these have frequently been abused or have had adverse environmental effects, such as the increased clearing of natural forest. The reported area of industrial plantations in Brazil, for example, increased from about 500000 ha in the mid-1960s to about 7 million ha in 1990 as a result of fiscal incentives offered by the state which were subsequently withdrawn following abuse of the scheme. In Chile the area of forest plantations rose from about 300000 ha in 1974, established largely by the state, to 1.45 million ha in 1990, mostly established by the private sector in response to planting grants which have now been withdrawn following criticism that plantations were being created on natural forest land. A vigorous programme of radiate pine plantation was started in New Zealand by the state with private sector involvement and the payment of incentives, but now it is the only country that does not offer incentives specifically to the forestry sector that are not offered to other sectors. Despite this, New Zealand continues to experience very rapid growth in radiate pine plantations, supported by a suitable infrastructure and extension efforts.

The state has also been involved in promoting the afforestation of land taken out of agricultural production, principally in countries of the European Union and the United States but also in countries with economies in transition in Eastern Europe.

In the future, industrial wood supplies will come increasingly from plantations. In the photo: plantation-grown mahogany in Fiji

Policy and management changes arising from the call for sustainable forest management made at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) and in subsequent related international conventions will affect planted trees and forests as well as natural forests. Such developments range from the various regional and ecoregional processes establishing criteria and indicators for monitoring progress towards sustainable forest management, trade and environmental concerns leading to forest certification and ecolabelling, guidelines for management practices, the encouragement or enhancement of biological diversity and multiple functions (including non-timber forest products and services), the role of forests as carbon sinks and carbon sources and the creation of employment.

The availability of suitable land may be a constraint to future expansion of forest plantation programmes. In some countries, such as South Africa, there is already a physical shortage of land for the expansion of forest plantation programmes, and further plantation expansion in India and some other Asian countries is likely to be primarily on land that has been degraded and has become unsuitable for agriculture, or that is in the process of degradation. It has been estimated that about 418 million ha of degraded land, including part of the deforested area, has the potential for afforestation and reforestation (Grainger, 1988). Although the estimate is tentative and rough, it indicates the vastness of the available land resource where plantation in the tropics can be developed, but the potential output of industrial wood from such sites which will be lower than from undegraded land, and may be constrained by soil conservation and rehabilitation requirements.

Research will be needed not only to identify species and techniques suitable for sites of low fertility but also to develop hybrids and clones through selection and tree breeding. Haines (in FAO, 1994) has reviewed the considerable potential of biotechnology for increasing wood yields and the yield of usable fibre, as numerous references already testify. It must, however, be borne in mind that the figures quoted from the use of improved planting stock developed from advanced tree breeding techniques are often derived from the early results of small-scale research plots and should be interpreted as such. More achievable results may be obtained with "traditional" methods of species selection and tree improvement.

Despite the potential of forest plantations for the production of high yields of industrial fibre, they are generally at more risk from pests, diseases and fire than natural forests. Wildfires pose a serious hazard for all forest plantations, and expanded areas of contiguous blocks grown in areas subject to seasonal drought and often of highly inflammable species will be at serious risk, requiring large investments in prevention and protection. Large areas of single species in even-aged blocks will be at risk of pests and diseases, enhanced by a possible reduction of resistance owing to selective breeding.

Another trend in the utilization of wood from forest plantations is in the development of new technologies to convert small logs from plantations, for example from thinnings.

As natural forests decrease or are removed from industrial roundwood production there is increasing interest in growing quality hardwoods such as teak and the mahoganies in plantations, and in attracting private investment to these ventures. Much remains to be done before assured and secure returns can be offered there is a shortage of information on growth rates, costs, future markets and the prices payable for small sizes - if those returns are to be obtained over the time scale likely to be of interest to small investors.

TABLE 3. Global plantation areas of non-forestry species used as sources of industrial wood, 1995

Region	Rubber	Coconut	Oil-palm	Total
	('000)
Latin America	238	269	265	772
Africa	529	461	922	1912
Asia and the Pacific	8718	10546	4587	23851
Total	9485	11276	5774	26535

Trees outside forests

The integration of planted trees into agricultural or pastoral systems is another way in which some land may become available for wood production. These are potentially higher-yielding sites, which include land as part of irrigated agricultural schemes or irrigated with effluent or wastewater.

In an inventory in the Ambala district of Haryana (India), about 1.5 million m³ of wood (standing) has been estimated of trees growing outside the forest area (Anon., 1995b). Such developments are also seen, for example, in the supply of pulpwood in Brazil and Thailand and poplar peeler logs in India or the growing of Paulownia sp. timber in windbreaks in central China. However, clear policies for the promotion of such schemes do not yet exist in most developing countries.

"Non-forestry" species such as rubber and coconut are of increasing importance for the supply of industrial fibre. The reported area of these species is about one-third of the reported area of forest plantations in the tropics and subtropics and, in the case of rubber, the species is already being grown in Malaysia as much for its timber as for latex. Only in certain countries and with certain species, however, do the reported figures of non-forestry species represent a resource that is available for industrial fibre supply. Nevertheless, the use of these species for traditional "forestry" purposes is expanding.

Conclusions

Planted trees in the future will be an increasingly important source of industrial fibre worldwide. These trees will be grown not only by large private enterprises but also on a small scale by farmers and other individual or community landowners. Government policy interventions will be required to create the right conditions for encouraging large and small investors to establish a sustainable programme of forest plantations for industrial roundwood supply.

The present lack of reliable information on almost every aspect of forest plantations, in developed and developing countries and regions alike, makes predictions about future supplies hazardous and liable to gross errors. This lack of information is a constraint not only to the development of suitable policies and the planning of plantation programmes for domestic use and for export, but also to determining research priorities for the establishment of plantations and for evaluating their environmental, social and economic effects.

The results of tree breeding activities, combined with better management and improved silvicultural knowledge, have the potential to give greatly improved yields but there will also be risks, of insect and disease attack and of fire, for example. Implementing and protecting an expanded programme of forest plantations will require improved capacity in the training of staff and also, in many cases, an improved infrastructure in rural areas.

Bibliography

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