Farm Forestry New Zealand

Survey of the needs of small-scale forest owners for information and decision support

Graham West and Dean Satchell, New Zealand Tree Grower May 2017.

This large group of small-scale owners is likely to influence the general public’s perception of forestry as a private investment. It will therefore affect the aspiration for an expanded planting programme to achieve the economic and environmental aims espoused by central and local government.

A working group formed by NZFFA, the Ministry for Primary Industries, the School of Forestry, NZX Agri, private consultants and Scion has been active in collating information and developing action to achieve greater involvement of small-scale owners. In November 2015 the working group developed a survey to find out what the information needs of this group were, what they needed and what information channels worked best.

The survey was sent out to 3,000 small-scale owners by email and 364 responded in the following month. This article reports the results of that survey.

The first question in the survey asked what type of investor they were. The results in the table show the biggest group were farmers, next were foresters, and then lifestylers. Surprisingly, 64 per cent did not call themselves farmers but could be farmers who chose ‘family business’ or ‘partnership’ as a response. Respondents could nominate several categories in their answers. Each table shows the percentage in each category of the total responses given.

Types of investors in small forest

Investor type	Per cent
Farmer	35.7
Forester	25.5
Lifestyle	18.8
Family business	15.8
Partnership	13.6
Private company	11.6
Individual investor	8.9
Joint venture	6.9
Trust	5.5
Trustee company	4.4
Other	2.2
Council	0.6
Maori incorporation	0.3

The next question asked about the purpose of the forest investment. The results in the table below show that investment diversification was a key reason for forestry investment. This was well ahead of best land use and superannuation.

Purpose of forest investment

Type	Per cent
Investment diversification	54.6
Best land use	43.5
Superannuation	37.3
Environmental protection	25.9
Aesthetics	17.8
Legacy or farm succession	17.0
Recreation and lifestyle	16.4
Other	6.4
Understorey crops and wildlife	5.6

The next question asked was about the size of the plantation. The results show that most woodlots were in the 11 to 40 hectare size class, next was zero to 10 hectares, followed by 41 to 100 hectares.

Woodlot size

Size in hectares	Per cent
0 to 10	28.0
11 to 40	39.3
41 to 100	14.7
101 to 500	13.9
501 to 1000	1.9
Other	2.2

Before asking about information needs, we next asked if they thought they had all the information required to manage their forests. Surprisingly, 54 per cent said yes and therefore did not need to fill in the rest of the questionnaire. In hindsight, this was a mistake but we did ask why they said yes. In reply, 79 per cent said they were already sufficiently informed, and 13 per cent said they do not personally manage the forest investment so do not require information.

For the 166 respondents who had answered that they did not have all the information they needed, we next asked − What are your information needs? The next table shows that information on harvesting, markets and marketing are the main areas of need. Maximising forest growth and tending are in the mid range, with species and site selection, environmental compliance and land use planning least selected. Again, multiple options could be chosen.

Information needs

Need	Per cent
Harvesting options and issues	62.0
Links to reputable wood buyers and harvesting contractors	57.8
Market information and price trends	54.2
Methods of marketing woodlots	51.2
Getting harvest ready	50.0
Links to harvesting and marketing advisors	45.2
Maximising forest growth and income	44.0
Trading of carbon	42.8
General forest management	39.2
Establishment and re-establishment of plantations	37.3
Roading requirements and costs	37.3
Tending - pruning and thinning	36.1
Species and site selection	30.1
Environmental compliance	30.1
Strategic land use planning	17.5

Next, we asked about information channels and how this information best provided. Results in the table on the next page show their preferences and each information channel was rated by its perceived usefulness. If we combine the ‘very useful’ and ‘useful’ categories we see a clear preference for workshops, seminars, web pages and field days. Web learning and journal articles are also favoured. Surprisingly, rural newspapers and brochures are some of the least preferred of the options suggested. Marae visits are probably low because of the ethnicity of the survey population.

Rating	Rural newspapers	Brochures	Science reports	Popular journal articles	Consultants	Web e-learning resource	Video	Field days	Workshops and seminars	Marae visits	Website pages
Very useful	4.4%	5.4%	11.4%	10.5%	11.6%	19.3%	10.1%	21.4%	24.8%	3.1%	27.7%
Useful	24.7%	27.0%	34.2%	41.2%	36.3%	37.9%	29.0%	41.6%	39.9%	5.5%	36.8%
Average usefulness	22.8%	27.7%	29.5%	27.5%	21.9%	20.0%	28.3%	16.9%	17.0%	11.8%	25.2%
Slightly useful	26.6%	27.7%	20.1%	14.4%	21.2%	13.1%	19.6%	11.7%	13.1%	26.8%	6.5%
Not useful	21.5%	12.2%	4.7%	6.5%	8.9%	9.7%	13.0%	8.4%	5.2%	52.8%	3.9%
Very useful and useful	29.1%	32.4%	45.6%	51.7%	47.9%	57.2%	39.1%	63.0%	64.7%	8.6%	64.5%

Preferred information channels

Our next set of questions considered computer based decision support.There have been several over the years and we wanted to know if they were still considered useful. The response to the question − Do you think software tools to be useful? was 79 per cent yes. This clearly indicates that small-scale forest owners have found a need for software tools.

We next asked what computer-based analysis tools would they like. Results show that those to assist with assessing woodlot value and time to harvest were in the top five. Land use options were mid-range, with scheduling, tending and soils analysis least preferred.

Value of software tool	Per cent
Assess your woodlot for area and volume	70.2
When to sell my woodlot	67.2
Assess your woodlot's current value	65.6
Log price forecasts	64.1
Estimate roading and harvesting costs	60.3
Profitability of land use options − decision support	38.2
Historic log price trends	36.6
Record system suitable for forest certification	33.6
Schedule your tending operations	29.0
Soil nutrient analysis for growth projections	23.7
Other	8.4

Conclusions and discussion

The main conclusions from this survey were that small-scale forest owners cannot be characterised easily, with the majority not calling themselves farmers. There is a range of reasons given for investing in small forests but the major identified diversification indicating they had other investments as well. Generally, small-scale forest owners can be characterised as having plantations which are often less than 40 hectares and have invested for a variety of reasons which are different from corporates. In other words, diversification, best land use and superannuation.

Their major information interests are strongly focused on harvesting and marketing and not so much around growing and tending. This may be due to the type of person prepared to respond to the questionnaire − due to harvest − and may fit with the demographic that these people own 90 per cent of the imminent ‘wall of wood’.

Generally, they like to get information via the web, and showed interest in e-learning from web tutorials and the like, but also favour human interaction to get information from field days and seminars. Most thought software tools were useful. These two results show the small-scale forest owners are quite computer literate and progressive. The methods they prefer are again related to the harvesting and marketing stage of their forest investment and perhaps, because they did not strongly favour information from consultants, would like to be able to evaluate options themselves.

Further analysis is planned to explore the interconnections between respondent type and the answers given with more formal publication and review. In addition, there were about 100 comments made in addition to answering the questions, this requires further condensing and reporting.

This survey has been invaluable in terms of giving insights to the somewhat large group of anonymous forest investors. We recommend the survey be re-run and an attempt to get a larger group of respondents who are not self-selecting to provide validation and new insights.

We thank all the small-scale forest owners who took the time to respond to this survey. Their opinions are important and may be influential in the future of the forest industry.