Farmers in the Welsh uplands are being urged to diversify by planting more trees in a new study showing that forestry delivers significantly greater economic benefits than farming.<\/p>\n
A report by SAC Consulting, covering 4,000 hectares (9,880 acres) of woodland and 4,000 ha (9,880 acres) of farmland, mainly in the South Cambrian and Upper Corris regions, has indicated that once established, productive conifer forestry delivers around five times the economic output of farming before subsidy.<\/p>\n
The report was presented to Carl Sargeant, the Welsh Government\u2019s Minister for Natural Resources, at this week\u2019s Royal Welsh Show.<\/p>\n
He had expressed an interest in a similar study carried out in the Scottish uplands, which also showed significantly greater benefits for forestry and asked for a similar study in Wales.<\/p>\n
The annual economic output of forestry in the Welsh study area was \u00a35.83 million, compared to \u00a31.2 million for farming. Spending in the local economy in the forestry study area was twice that of farming, while forestry employment was 60 per cent higher than farming.<\/p>\n
The report was commissioned by the Welsh committee of Confor, which represents almost 2,000 forestry and wood-using businesses across the UK.<\/p>\n
Confor\u2019s chief executive, Stuart Goodall, said: \u201cThis research by respected consultants demonstrates that productive softwood forestry is a very significant economic activity in rural Wales \u2013 and a real economic opportunity for Welsh upland farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt provides an opportunity for those farmers to successfully diversify their businesses, deliver more for the environment, create shelter belts for livestock, enhance biodiversity – and reduce reliance on public subsidy in the longer term.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report showed that annual output per hectare is \u00a383.72 before subsidy for forestry compared to a deficit of \u00a3109.50 before subsidy for farming.<\/p>\n
Martin Bishop, Wales manager for Confor, emphasised that the report was not a call to blanket the hills with trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s be very clear. We do not want to plant trees on high-quality agricultural land. We want farmers to consider planting trees on marginal land which is not delivering as much as it should be.”<\/p>\n
The statistics in the report reflect a strong timber market and recognise that the relative benefits would narrow as timber prices became less buoyant – but the long-term economic output of forestry is still predicted to be 1.5 times that of farming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Farmers in the Welsh uplands are being urged to diversify by planting more trees in a new study showing that forestry delivers significantly greater economic benefits than farming. A report by SAC Consulting, covering 4,000 hectares (9,880 acres) of woodland and 4,000 ha (9,880 acres) of farmland, mainly in the South Cambrian and Upper Corris […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[10356,10354],"class_list":["post-27312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-welsh-committee-of-comfor","supplier-welsh-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27312"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=27312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}