Florida timber in trouble
Will landowners replant after Idalia?
Jody Roberts, a 71-year-old tree farmer, sat in his truck last week and watched his land burn.
Over 100 acres of stumps and splintered slash pine smoldered, disintegrated to ash and floated into the wind, hitting the windshield of his white Ford F-150.
It’s early April, but Roberts is getting ready for October.
“I told my boys, I said if y’all want to replant, I’ll help. But I said, at my age, it’d be stupid for me to plant back. I’ll never see the income off of it,” the Perry resident said.
Roberts is one of hundreds of landowners in Florida left with too much timber that has nowhere to go, thanks to a “perfect storm” of events, timber businessman Don Curtis explained.
Curtis doesn’t like to use cliches, but Florida timber is in trouble.
The multi-billion-dollar market isn’t what it used to be. Landowners are reevaluating whether to replant since Hurricane Idalia slammed into Perry and Taylor County, once dubbed the “The Tree Capital of the South.” Pine trees 20 to 30 years old, almost ready to be harvested, were snapped like toothpicks by Category 3 hurricane winds and tornadoes.
Then just 19 days later, Taylor County experienced another disaster when Georgia-Pacific said it was closing the Foley Cellulose mill, which had been operating for 68 years. Cellulose, a tough, fibrous material that comes from tree pulp, is used for thousands of things, including cell phone covers, the coating of medicines, in lipstick and other everyday items.
In less than three weeks, landowners who tried to salvage their trees had very few options of where to take them. Georgia-Pacific stopped taking wood the day they announced, said Curtis, president of The Forestry
Company in Perry.
“It left landowners and the loggers just holding the bag,” he added.
Landowners are hoping another wood-using industry will move into Taylor County. Timber has been one of the state’s top cash crops for years, Curtis said. But the probability of another company moving into the area is dependent on whether landowners replant for the future – and some have decided to give up.
“It’s this period of uncertainty between the GP closure and what’s next that has people feeling pessimistic,” Curtis said.
A ‘man-made disaster’
When Idalia made landfall, it crashed through thousands of acres of pine trees before it made its way up the eastern coast, where it caused flooding and maintained 60 mile-per-hour winds. It was the first hurricane in over a century to hit this part of Florida.
The Florida Forest Service, which is under the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, estimated the damages at almost $65 million in timber value. The majority of the trees affected were pines on private land, trees that contributed tens of billions of dollars to Florida’s economy. In 2016, a study estimated the forest industry contributed $25.05 billion in revenue.
Last fall during a special session, the Florida Legislature appropriated $37.5 million in grant money to FDACS to assist timber landowners in Charlotte, Citrus, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Hernando, Jefferson, Lafayette, Levy, Madison, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Sarasota, Suwannee and Taylor counties.
So far, 194 applications have been received worth $18.9 million to replant after the natural disaster, FDACS spokesperson Jessica Kelleher said.
“The destruction from Hurricane Idalia was devastating and the closure of the Georgia-Pacific Foley Cellulose facility in Taylor County couldn’t have come at a worse time for the hardworking folks who rely on timber and its related operations for their livelihoods,” Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson told the USA TODAY Network - Florida. “Florida’s farmers, ranchers, and growers work day in, day out, rain or shine, to feed our state and nation — and we will do everything we can to support them.”
The closure of the Foley mill, which has been called a “man-made disaster,” has caused a ripple effect among the state’s timber industry. Since GeorgiaPacific announced the closure of the facility, at least two sawmills have permanently closed.
The Foley mill, first built by Procter & Gamble in the 1950s, was a major producer of specialty fibers from predominantly slash pine, according to GeorgiaPacific’s website. The company acquired the mill in 2013; it was one of seven worldwide.
A study by the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) reported a potential loss of $571.8 million in sales in the state as a result of the mill’s closure.
After Idalia and the closing of the Foley mill, the price of wood pulp dropped 15%, and the price of timber dropped to half of what it was before the recession, Curtis said.
Some landowners decided to haul their timber to sawmills further away, but that cost more in shipping, an added expense.
In Taylor County, more than 20% of the economy depended on the timber industry. It’s a renewable resource, as long as people replant, Curtis said.
“As tree planters, we’re the world’s greatest optimists, because we plant trees not knowing what the next 25 years will hold,” he added.
Once a cash crop, now burned to ash
Idalia physically changed the landscape of Taylor County and other timber-producing areas, but the closure of the Foley mill crippled the economic landscape of Perry where 12% of people who lived in the county seat were employed. UF/IFAS estimated more than $377 million in revenue for the county would be lost as a result of the mill closure.
Roberts has worked in the timber industry for 50 years. At 71, if he replanted, he would be at least 91 until he saw a profit.
He’s doing it for his kids, who are in their late 30s and 40s, and his niece and nephew.
Roberts sold the timber he could recover from the storm. As for the rest of the damaged pine trees, some could have once been sold to the Foley mill. Instead,
that wood was pushed into mounds and set afire.
Last week, it was clear with blue skies, but the smoke was gray and befouled the air with the smell of lost money. “A year ago, what was once a cash crop, (now) he’s having to burn some of it,” Curtis said.
Eventually, the piles of ash will be used to fertilize the new seedlings of slash pine that he hopes to plant in December with the state’s help.
In the driver’s seat of his truck, Roberts lamented how the timber industry will never be the same. But he doesn’t plan on leaving Perry. He’s lived there since he was 7.
“I mean, why would I want to go somewhere else?” he said.
Ana Goñi-Lessan is the State Watchdog Reporter for USA TODAY - Florida and can be reached at AGoniLessan@tallahassee.com . Follow her on Twitter @goni_lessan.