The logic and reason regarding forest husbandry.
What is it possible to achieve and what is simply hype supporting commercial interests?
Please read past this first part of the explanation of the aspects of Forest Management.
I want to put the pitfalls into the light and then get to
an answer that may make you smile.
First I will get to the big Gorilla in the room with forest management.
Much of what passes for “Forest Management” is a thinly veiled logging interest focused massacre of our forests.
Why would I say that?
Because if you put your forest land into Chapter 61 and gain the tax breaks that come with that, you are obliged to file a ten year harvest schedule for the land if it is woodland.
What the State is saying with Chapter 61 ,61A and B is that you are claiming the land use is agricultural in nature and as such, you must treat the land almost the same way you would treat open farmland and show a “harvest” from it.
The real rub to this concept comes if you were to be thinking about long term management and the thought of developing a “mature” forest,.
You will be dancing around the forest management requirements and the “Thinning” and ultimately the “Harvest” requirements for the land.”
Granted, the whole cycle in New England can run for fifty years to main harvest due to slow tree growth but in the end your “forest” that you nurtured for fifty years will become part of a logging program.
What about a “Conservation Restriction” on the land?
Yes, this is a viable way to “protect” a piece of this Earth without incurring a mandated “harvest” of your forest, but remember that for the most part these Conservation Restrictions (CR) are permanent and may not qualify for as large a tax break.
So, what I just talked about, is a fifty plus year commitment to your forest and then your children or descendants will finally at least with a Conservation Restriction in place, get to see your forest start to look like it may have looked before the first ships with sails crossed the Atlantic and marked the best and largest trees as the “King’s Property”
Starting with land with mature trees on it would be even better but NOT with 61, 61A or 61B.
That program will invoke an immediate partial harvest schedule for the trees as they are at “harvest size” already.
Okay, so that is the good and bad of Chapter 61 and Conservation Restrictions.
Why and how does this relate to Sustainable Agriculture?
Fifty years is a very long time!
Fifty years is the lifetime of a person grown and adult enough to have the resources to buy and protect a woodland.
What if you could increase the growth rate of the trees let’s say by double their normal growth rate?
How would that look if the fifty years of growth on your trees, grew trees with sixteen inch girth instead of eight or ten?
This is possible two ways.
One, you slather on chemical fertilizer much like any crop.
This is where your flirtation with Sustainable Farming would end.
The extra Nitrogen applied as fertilizer, would bleed into the environment, nourishing the decomposing bacteria that would in turn, chew up the organic matter on the floor of the forest, reducing the Soil Organic Matter content of the soil just as it does in commercial agriculture.
Do this year on year and the SOM would plummet down from maybe six percent in a virgin forest down to less than one percent.
Why is that important?
It matters a great deal because the Soil Organic Matter measurement is really a measure of the numbers and health of the Rhizosphere bacteria that live in close association with the roots of the trees and plants.
It is these bacteria that hold the key to managing a sustainable farm or woodland.
It is these bacteria that when present in a “natural” environment, perform Nitrogen fixation in the soil and trade sugars from the tree roots for Nitrogen for the tree.
Nitrogen Fixation and Nutrient Acquisition by Soil Bacteria.
Nitrogen Fixation isn’t the only talent of these bacteria, they also mine the soil for the other nutrients like Potassium and Phosphorous and all the trace metals.
When you stop to think about it, it is only because of the presence of these bacteria that a plant or tree can grow at all.
It is the bacteria that break down the rock in the soil and release the nutrients other than Nitrogen that the plant roots take up for the tree’s growth.