King’s Ransom
Ohio tree farmers’ cooperative seeks
better markets, prices for ‘King of Pines’
By Ashley Lykins
Ohio Cooperative
Development Center
unlight filters through a southeastern Ohio
forest near Amesville as Pete Woyar stops his
pick-up truck alongside a gravel road.
Pointing to some tree farms, he explains that
these stands of white pine belong to members of the Ohio
Premium Pine Cooperative (OPPC), based in
McConnelsville.
“We’re a group of landowners who thought that by
banding together we could more effectively market pine,”
explains Woyar, a forester and secretary for the
cooperative.
Pine trees are actively marketed,
Woyar explains, but it is a relatively
low-value market in which most of the
trees are used for wood pulp. Many of
these pines, however, yield good lumber
and with a better marketing effort can
net higher value when sold as material
for furniture, wainscot siding, log
homes and timber frames. That desire
is what led to the formation of OPPC.
“We thought we could exert a little
more marketing leverage [as a co-op]
because together we have a greater
amount of pine to work with,” Woyar
says.
Marketing the king
The late Harold Jeffers, who founded
Jeffers Tree Farm, played a key role
in the formation of the co-op in 2000.
He moved to the area in 1948, buying a
farm near Chesterville, and soon began
planting pine trees. In 2003, Jeffers was
inducted into the Ohio Department of
Natural Resources Hall of Fame—the
only tree farmer ever so recognized.
Today, Jeffers’ son, Jim, controls the
3,200-acre farm, and he still plants pine
trees.
“White pine is a historically important
wood in the development of the
United States,” says Jim Jeffers. “We’re
a little farther south of its [normal]
range, but it seems to have good growth
and not a lot of disease problems. It’s a
majestic tree. It’s not just any pine tree:
it’s the king of pines.”
The elder Jeffers worked his large
pine acreage intensively, thinning and
pruning to build strong stands, says
Woyar. “The farm had really grown to
a pretty good size,” he says. “But he
wasn’t satisfied with selling the pine as a
low-value product to be ground into
wood chips.”
Jeffers brought Woyar into the picture
because “there is a difference
between an industrial forester and a
land-management forester,” according
to Woyar. “I’m an industrial forester,”
he says. “I’m the timber beast. They are
landowners and growers of timber, and
most don’t understand the mechanics of
the market. That’s why they brought
me in.”
Additionally, Woyar says he knows
the technical side of logging, how to
restore a site and how to supervise logging
contractors.
Meetings lead to co-op
After he became involved, Woyar, a
retired forestry instructor from Hocking
College, met with a group of tree farmers
interested in forming a co-op.
Meetings were held, at which Woyar
urged the growers to “be realistic,”
stressing that some of the trees were
not fit for anything other than wood
pulp. However, for many of their trees,
he said better markets could be developed.
At that point, the group enlisted help
from others, including The Ohio
Cooperative Development Center
(OCDC) and USDA Rural
Development. “They were very helpful,”
Woyar says. “We were told how to
establish a set of bylaws, how to define
ourselves as a business and how to set
ourselves up as a co-op.”
Acting as a “motivator” for the
future co-op, Ron Miller, forestry
industry specialist at the Ohio State
University South Centers in Piketon,
Ohio, had originally met with a group
of people involved with forestry in
1993.
“We discussed issues associated with
white pine, and it led to a couple of
marketing projects,” Miller says. “This
allowed the transition for white pine
growers to form a co-op that believed
there were more markets for white pine
than just paper.”
At that time, “the only choice
landowners had was to sell it for paper
for a modest payment,” Miller says.
“When someone has spent half their
life watching the pine grow, that’s disappointing,
and the forestry industry’s
credibility is at stake.”
Grants spur market work
The cooperative development center
gave OPPC a series of “mini-grants.”
One was used to take a trip to
Wisconsin to visit a pine cooperative
(which is no longer in existence).
Another was used to develop a brochure
as a recruitment tool, while a third
helped create the co-op’s logo, letterhead
and stationery.
“The center also provided many
services, such as creating a mailing list,
mailing things for us and helping us
establish our base in McConnelsville,”
Woyar says.
The cooperative applied for and
received a $160,000 Value-Added
Producer Grant from USDA Rural
Development that was used for a study
of the pine market.
“We did a very thorough, 18-month
study of pine markets as they existed
then,” Woyar says, which helped to
identify opportunities for the co-op’s
wood.
By 2004, the cooperative had a complete
set of bylaws and membership and
market agreements and registered as an
Ohio cooperative.
The name of the co-op is important,
Miller says. “The name conveys that
Ohio pine is premium pine,” he
explains, adding that trade marking and
branding is a key element in business.
In 2004, OPPC began thinning
white pine by using contractors with
cut-to-length equipment, a new technology
for the region that involves delimbing
trees and cutting them to
length directly at the stump area.
Lumber prices up sharply
OPPC has, according to Woyar, exerted
some influence on the stumpage price,
which is now 50 to 100 percent more
than when the co-op was established.
Part of that gain is due to an
improvement in the overall market, he
notes. “But I like to think that part of it
has been our marketing effort, too.”
A Canadian company, for example, is
offering 20 percent more than market
price for the group’s large pine logs, he
says. “We’re looking for specialty products
for our individual trees,” Woyar
says of the co-op’s marketing strategy.
“Some people have large trees, and
there is a niche market out there for big
pine trees.”
Members thoroughly inventory their
properties so as to be knowledgeable
about what they’ve got to market. The
co-op has an extensive list of contacts,
who are kept abreast of what OPPC has
available. Likewise, those contacts communicate
their needs and specifications
to the co-op.
A future goal is to add more value to
members’ timber by relying less on
“spot sales,” and instead hiring a logging
contactor to harvest the trees and
either market the logs or go into basic
manufacturing.
“The way timber is sold, it’s often a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for
many landowners,” explains Woyar.
“They make a decision to sell their timber,
and they might cut the whole farm.
It might be another 30 or 40 years
before there can be another timber harvest.
We would instead like to cut a little
bit, more frequently, so we’re producing
timber on a continuing, sustainable
basis.”
Not only are the members of OPPC
attempting to be “fairly compensated”
for their work and material, according
to Woyar, but they also want to set an
example. “We’re in this to practice
good, sustainable forestry. We would
like to see the co-op recognized as a
dependable supplier of raw materials for
local sawmills and others.”
Challenges ahead
There are major challenges facing
the co-op, says Woyar. Finding enough
cash to run the business is the first.
Right now, the co-op is “making a modest
profit,” Woyar says, but not earning
enough to hire a full-time manager. To
an extent, it is still reliant on grants.
OPPC recently applied for another
grant for smaller, lighter logging equipment
which would have less impact on
the land and allow it to tackle smaller
logging jobs. The logging machinery
used now is expensive and is geared for
harvesting large quantities of 30- to 40-year-old trees. “That’s our biggest hurdle
right now: to get smaller logging
equipment on land and make it profitable,”
says Woyar.
Recruitment of new members and
encouraging member involvement is
another challenge, he says. The
landowners, especially large forest owners,
are usually retired, and they often
don’t feel “a sense of urgency” about
their lumber business.
Demographics play a part when an
older member dies and the forest land
passes to an heir. “You’ve got an older
membership and have to face the facts:
mortality becomes an issue,” says
Woyar.
“There’s a transition. The new generation
comes in with a different set of
objectives without the benefit of having
gone through the formation process of
the co-op. A re-education and training
process takes place to bring them on
and keep the co-op going,” Woyar says.
The bright side of the transition is
that a new perspective can be found
with the new members, which include
lawyers, doctors, computer programmers
and bankers. “It’s a different perspective.”
“There should be a plan for succession,”
Miller says. “The next generation
comes into the co-op, and they need to
get in tune with it.”
Jim Jeffers says he would like to see
more members in OPPC. “I think if it’s
going to have an economic impact of
any significance, it needs to have a lot
more members,” says Jeffers, a lawyer
in California who has spent considerable
time in Ohio since taking over the
tree farm. The emphasis, he says,
should be to join the co-op and learn
how to make the forest healthier.
“There ought to be more emphasis
on accelerating growth and making
trees less disease-prone,” Jeffers adds.
Approximately a third of the family’s
tree farm is enrolled in the cooperative.
Members sign a marketing agreement,
which grants marketing rights to the
landowner’s pine to the cooperative.
Inspiring other forest co-ops
“OPPC is truly people getting
together to cooperate to make a better
situation,” Woyar says. “[Members] are
willing to take some money from a sale
and put it into a pot to benefit all the
members, and that’s what differentiates
a co-op from other businesses.”
Miller says he thinks that if OPPC
flourishes, there is potential for more
forestry cooperatives, including hardwood
co-ops.
Establishing a cooperative is a long
and slow process, says Woyar. “It takes
a lot of work and a lot of talking. You’re
not going to sit down and in two days
have a co-op.”
A second piece of advice Woyar
offers is to seek help from a cooperative
development center, the local chamber
of commerce and USDA. “They all
have talents and skills, and they all have
mandates to assist these types of businesses.
Avail yourself of all the help that
is out there.”
For more information, contact
Woyar at 740-664-2475 or
pwoyar@verizon.net.
