Influence of Forestry Practices Cost on Financial Performance of Forestry Investments

Daniel W. Callaghan, Puskar N. Khanal, Thomas J. Straka and Donald L. Hagan
Additional contact information
Daniel W. Callaghan: Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0317, USA
Puskar N. Khanal: Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0317, USA
Thomas J. Straka: Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0317, USA
Donald L. Hagan: Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0317, USA

Resources, 2019, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Understanding forestry practices cost is important for predicting the financial outcome of forest management activities. Assessing costs of practices that will be used in the future can be difficult and may result in over or underestimations of financial returns depending on the values used. We used historic real average rates of cost change for the southern United States to assess changes in the values of several loblolly pine plantation management scenarios over time through the use of discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis. Additionally, we analyzed the impact of certain practices cost changes on the financially optimal number of thinnings and rotation age. Findings indicated that declining costs for herbicide site preparation could all but offset the increasing costs of other practices and that a relatively slight increase in timber prices would more than compensate for increasing costs. Also, increasing thinning costs could exacerbate the effects of low sawtimber prices, further decreasing the viability of regimes with multiple thinnings. In the face of stagnant timber prices, the use of operator-select thinnings, and herbicide site preparation could stabilize the long-term financial value of plantation management.

Keywords: forestry costs; forestry practices; forestry investments; timberland investments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/8/1/28/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/8/1/28/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jresou:v:8:y:2019:i:1:p:28-:d:202238

Access Statistics for this article

Resources is currently edited by Ms. Donchian Ma

More articles in Resources from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().