A good year

By Karl W. Llndberg President

Southern Forest Products Association lvenvoNE who remembers h"Gone With the Wind" recalls that, in the midst of the worst turmoil and tragedy, the plucky Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara would lift up her chin and muster her spirits by saying, "After all. tomorrow is another day." The southern pine lumber industry, struggling to operate profitably in the nation's sluggish economy and wondering if conditions will ever get better, might echo Scarlett's words, for tomorrow will surely bring not just another day, but a better day.

The economy is ripe for recovery, lumber markets are poised for acceleration, and southern pine producers are positioned to dash ahead as soon as the starting gun is fired. I don't know, and I doubt if even the experts know, just when that will come. It is a matter of precise confluence of consumer confidence, credit availability and other variables largely beyond control. However, a very good year is waiting out there, only a tomorrow away.

The southern pine lumber industry has been diversifying demand for its products through the Southem Forest Products Association's five-year marketing marathon. This aims to boost demand a billion board feet by the middle of the '90s by stimulating such market sectors as engineered wood systems, exports, industrial, repair & remodeling and treated residential.

By relying less on fading homebuilding and more on new, valueadded markets, when housing starts dwindled to 1.2 million units in 1990, southern pine production was 12.9 billion board feet. the fourth consecutive year that production exceeded l2 billion board feet. In 1991, with homebuilding still feeble, southern pine production has fallen only slightly, giving every indication of finishing over 12 billion board feet for the fifth consecutive year.

When the economic recovery comes, we will be able to produce more than l3 billion board feet of southem pine lumber annually, representing a3OVo share of the market.

Clearly, the southem pine industry is braced for the long haul in its marketing approach. Just as cleady, it sees that it must increase attention to chal- lenges on the forest resource front, where preservationists have Proclaimed their true agenda to stop the harvesting of trees for any reason.

The preservationists manifest the zealot's strategy of using any means to achieve their uncompromising ends. They are turning spotted owls. old growth forests, biodiversity and, in the South, the red-cockaded woodpecker into padlocks to cage America's forests in a museum-like state.

We must take aggressive but sophisticated steps to convince the public that we are responsible stewards of the land, using the bounty God has provided to produce needed lumber, plywood and paper, and then replenishing what has been harvested so that tomorrow can be another day in the most positive sense.

Story at a Glance

Southern plne Industry ready for recovery...13 bllllon bf or 30% market share posslble ... new markets wlll create demand...preservatlonlste must be defeated by convlnclng the publlc lumbermen are responslble stewards of the land.