We are now bioeconomists!

Sometimes, referring to a farmer as an ‘agricultural economist’ is meant more as a joke. However, considering the complexity of modern agriculture, there is clearly more than a grain of truth in this. Looking at the rapid increase in importance that our forests are currently experiencing, one might be tempted to think that foresters will soon be able to call themselves ‘bioeconomists’.

Until recently, forest owners could only generate significant income by selling timber – apart from a few special uses such as gravel extraction, which is not really forestry anymore because no trees grow there. This one-dimensional picture is currently undergoing massive change.

Wind turbines are a hot topic of debate and a prominent feature of the landscape as part of the energy transition. They can be described as a ‘secondary use of forest land,’ as almost all of the following aspects can still be implemented in the forest even when rotor blades are turning 140 metres above. With the exception of a few recreational activities and burial sites, perhaps, where the background noise is really disturbing. A slight market saturation can already be observed in forest cemeteries. Even though this uncomplicated type of final resting place is very much in vogue, many communities already have their own forest cemetery or memorial forest.

Carbon storage will become a major issue in the near future. Trading in CO2 certificates is still in its infancy and is anything but trivial. After all, many concepts are about rewarding additional storage capacity that goes beyond the usual level. If all carbon storage in wood and soil is to be rewarded, the removal of trees during timber harvesting would ultimately have to be offset. The potential certificates would have to include at least a period during which use is suspended or reduced to what is necessary for forestry purposes. The necessary quantifications are therefore complex and complicated, and the discussions on this subject are not yet really concluded, but a few examples have already been implemented.

Ecosystem services

When they hear the buzzword ‘ecosystem services,’ most people probably think of biodiversity, species protection, and the guarantee of clean water and air that our forests have always provided. What these aspects have in common is that they can hardly be turned into marketable products. Who should ultimately pay for something that is intended to benefit the general public? The German government's new funding programmes for climate-adapted forest management attempt to address this issue to some extent: the state or taxpayer gives money to forest owners who, for example, forego timber revenues by leaving habitat trees in their stands.

Forest management and timber utilisation

With all these new facets, we must not forget that trees still need to grow in the forest and that we urgently need this environmentally friendly raw material. The future of timber use also holds many opportunities and challenges. Rapidly advancing climate change requires us to answer the question of which tree species are likely to thrive in this country in the near future. Should we try ‘miracle trees’ or the widest possible range of wood species so that the stands can respond to as many eventualities as possible? In some places, the focus is already on sheer forest conservation and the question of whether anything that can be called a tree will grow at all in the disaster areas in the near future.

Parallel to the forests, the possible uses for wood – or should we rather speak of biomass? – are also becoming increasingly diverse. Yes, the traditional softwood industry is concerned about what will happen when the large quantities currently being produced as a result of forest conversion are used up. Current wood supply forecasts (WEHAM) show quite clearly that the amount of wood available in Germany will not decrease, but that the proportion of hardwood will increase significantly. For a long time, it was unclear what would become of this material. The possible uses seemed limited and the proportion of low-quality hardwood, which is really only suitable for energy production, was far too high. A huge change is also on the horizon in these areas. UPM's biorefinery in Leuna is an impressive harbinger of this. On an industrial scale, beech wood is used there to produce the raw material for all kinds of chemical applications that were previously based on petroleum. Lignew is the name of an innovative product from Butterweck Holzstoffe, which produces a wood foam material directly from wood chips. These are just two examples of this forward-looking and certainly increasingly important area of use for wood.

In future, there will be more and more marketing opportunities for wood from the forest, rather than fewer. That is the good news. The complete collapse of the firewood market in the first winter of the Ukraine war, when fears of a severe energy crisis were rife, serves as a cautionary example of what happens when competing uses become unbalanced. At that time, manufacturers of wood insulation materials and even beech sawmills had almost no chance of obtaining their raw materials for months due to extreme shortages and the accompanying price spirals. However, it is a truism that a durable wood product is better for our planet than direct combustion. Only the long-term material use of our raw material wood can contribute to CO² reduction.