Harvest for Use Project
During the Cornerstone Project, VSJF discovered that long-term changes throughout the supply chain are necessary for sustainable forestry practices to dominate the market. In particular, overcoming barriers in supply, assisting the marketing efforts of manufacturers, and continuing to educate and encourage consumers, purchasers, landowners, resource managers, and manufacturers regarding certification and forest products are required.
In 2007, we started applying this learning to an innovative pilot project with our partners: Redstart Forestry (consulting forester), the Vermont Land Trust (large landowner), Allard Lumber Company (primary mill), Champlain Hardwoods (broker) and Copeland Furniture (manufacturer). This project seeks to aggregate the supply of Vermont-grown, FSC-certified wood, maintain the chain-of-custody from tree-to-finished product, and work with wood manufacturers to offer consumers Vermont-grown, FSC-certified wood furniture.
Copeland Furniture has indicated a desire to access a minimum of 100,000 board feet of FSC-certified, Vermont-grown sugar maple which they will manufacture into their Harbor Island line of solid wood furniture. Redstart and the Vermont Land Trust have the FSC-certified timber available and the relationship with loggers. Allard and Champlain Hardwoods are certified to ensure that the chain-of-custody is intact. By assisting Copeland Furniture with their promotion of a Vermont, certified line of furniture, we will attempt to prove that by aggregating the supply of FSC logs, managing their flow all along the supply chain and telling a compelling story of tree-to-finished product, consumers will in fact be willing to pay a premium for this new line of products. This premium would then be distributed throughout the supply chain, including to the original landowners who are practicing good stewardship in their forests. The experience in Pennsylvania is particularly promising, with a recent paper calculating an extra $7.7 million generated from the sale of certified state forest timber from 2001 to 2006.
If the pilot project is successful, we will approach other interested foresters, landowners, wood products companies, and brokers to create a wood supply network that will support sustainable forestry, local value-added processing, the production of FSC-certified, Vermont-grown wood products, and return greater margins back to stakeholders along the supply chain.
This project will provide participating landowners, foresters, loggers, mill owners, and wood manufacturers, with an opportunity to create stronger linkages between themselves, increase the quality of forest management and protect the ecological integrity of the forest through third-party certification, protect working class jobs in the forest products sector against overseas competition where unsustainable and/or illegal forestry is the norm, and provide a framework for greater cooperation up and down the forest products supply chain.
Photo Credits: Forest (left), Wayne Fawbush; Ben Machin marking a tree (middle), Redstart Forestry; Library furniture (right), Beeken Parsons.
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