Associate Member Spotlight Highlights associate members who are invaluable to AFA. Through their financial support, associate members fund AFA grassroots activities and outreach to members and prospective members. Please support our associate members. They are an integral
International Forest Company
part of the AFA family.
For over 40 years International Forest Company has been practicing its original mission statement of “Helping People Grow Trees.� The company was originally started as International Forest Seed Company in Birmingham, Alabama, where it specialized in tree seed processing and seed sales. n the early 1980s, the company headquarters were moved to Odenville, Alabama, where a new state of the art seed, nursery, and research facility was built. During this period, the forest industry was making some tremendous changes by questioning land ownership and forest landowners were discovering the opportunity to invest in forestry as less productive agricultural lands were being taken out of agriculture. This proved to be a turning point for International Forest Seed Company. The company started commercial production of container seedlings in 1983 and entered the bareroot nursery market in 1985 by using excess capacity in industry nurseries to produce and sell seedlings. During this time of change, it was decided to change the company name to International Forest Company (IFCO). In 1992, Wayne Bell along with two partners purchased IFCO. Production grew to over 140 million container and bareroot seedlings in five locations. IFCO became one of the first private companies that owned a nursery business as well as a seed orchard that produced genetically improved seed. When the forest industry began selling its lands at a rapid pace in the 1990s and the government started decreasing its cost share program, the demand for tree seedlings changed as well. By the early 2000s, the tree planting efforts were fifty percent lower than the past decade. In 2003, Patrick Mobley of Mobley Plant Company acquired IFCO, and the headquarters were moved to
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Control mass pollination (CMP) in action: all of this takes place 30 to 80 feet in the air! inset: Only the best female parents are bagged for CMP production.
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ALABAMA FORESTS | Winter 2017