Tree Talk with Peter Harington Woodmetrics Regional Manager

One of the questions I get asked most when I am visiting farmers with trees is whether they should be pruning their trees or not.

At the moment, it is actually hard to justify pruning on a strictly financial return on investment basis. If you do a spreadsheet exercise on the merits of pruning using current prices it just won't stack up. For this reason, many of the corporate forest owners have now stopped pruning, or are being very selective about what they prune. The problem is the current margin between the slumped pruned log price and the export price which has increased during the last two years, even if it is down a little at the moment.

If the regime used then adopts a wide spacing, so the tonnes per hectare are down as well, then the value per hectare of a pruned stand can be below that of a stand managed for a structural regime. At Woodmetrics, we have sold clients forests recently where bids for unpruned stands have valued them higher than pruned stands on a per hectare basis.

Having said this, there is still a good argument for farm foresters to prune. The equation for a farm forestry block may be different if the site is very fertile. Radiata grown on very high nitrogen sites and in shelter belts or near the stand edge will tend to grow big ugly branches. These logs may only be suitable for pulp logs, which is of negligible value. In this situation when we are comparing pruned logs with pulp logs, the spreadsheet exercise looks completely different. There are other good reasons to prune as well.

A small forest owner with pruned logs has market options at harvest which are not open when there is no pruning. The fact that the corporates are not pruning as much is a good reason to prune. A strong industry has been built up producing clearwood products from pruned logs and will still need feeding.

Also a pruned stand has more grazing under it for a longer period and the fences do better without branches interfering with them.

Finally, ask is it wise to make a 20 year investment decision based only on current market prices?

There are still lots to consider when making the decision to prune, but at the end of the day, it is a venture of faith as it always has been.