Vol. XV No. 3
May / June 2021
Serving Soil, Mulch, Compost & Wood Pellet Producers www.SoilandMulchProducerNews.com
NEWS
From the Golden Leaf to Brown Gold Pine Straw Mulch Market Continues to Grow, Despite Being Labor Intensive
P
ine grows naturally on the sandhills of the Carolinas, and the longleaf pine, which is straight, strong, and pliable, has become a valuable commodity for many tree growers and harvesters. In earlier days, pine trees were harvested primarily for their wood, and much of it being sent to Europe where there was a shortage of lumber. Pine sap was also tapped for tar pitch and turpentine to be sold to naval stores for waterproofing ships. Over time, almost all of the pines were cut. The land then became a great opportunity for developers, though some landowners, instead, became tobacco farmers in order to keep their land. The allure was the Tobacco Allotment System. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had operated a tobacco-production cartel since the early 1930s, during the New Deal. According to Dr. Mike Walden, a Professor and Extension Economist at North Carolina State University, “The idea behind the program was simple. Limit the production of tobacco, and the price will rise. It was expected growers could make more money selling less tobacco at a higher price than selling more tobacco at a lower price. The government controlled production by limiting who could grow tobacco (only those holding a government provided “allotment”) and capping total production (called the “quota”) each year. When the program ended, there were about 430,000 quota owners and about 60,000 active producers of tobacco in the United States.” When tobacco -- the Golden Leaf -- became taboo, the Tobacco Allotment System was suspended. The writing was on the wall, tobacco had to go. But many of
By Kathleen Marquardt the farmers asked themselves, what to replace it with if you weren’t going to sell out to developers? Some farmers wanted to keep the land agricultural; that, and the fact that the long-needle pine tree grew there naturally were great incentives. They saw that Brown Gold, the long‑leaf pine, was a perfect crop to replace tobacco. The fallow tobacco fields were residual, fertilized fields, high in phosphorus and potassium, which are beneficial to pine trees. That and the fact that pines grow naturally across the South, from Texas to Florida and up to North Carolina, was encouraging for farmers wanting to find a way to preserve their land and make a living from it. T h o u g h l o n g l e a f p i n e, being straight and strong, is a popular t re e fo r l u m b e r, it takes decades before the trees can be harvested. Once harvested, new trees to replace them have
to be planted and tended to for at least another 20 years before they can be harvested again. One visionary farmer, who would be getting out of tobacco (because the Tobacco Allotment program was ending), hit on the idea of using the pine needles as mulch, which opened a market for a commodity that was a byproduct of the trees without removing them… and the needles were there for the taking. Because the long-leaf pine are slow-growing trees, Terry Bryant, farmer and owner of the Pinestar Farms in Carthage, Georgia, who took the farm from tobacco crops to long-leaf pine, said that they must wait ten years to begin the gathering of the pine needles for straw. But, unlike harvesting the wood for lumber, they can then harvest the needles indefinitely. Though it took a while to discern that the longleaf pine needles made a far better mulch than the short-leafed pine needles, a new market was thus created. Pine needle mulch, like other mulches, has both plusses and minuses. On the plus side, it is natural and sustainable, and it makes an attractive ground cover that helps prevent weed growth. These characteristics benefit tree growers. They also benefit the wildlife Continued on page 4