FORWARD

Most Tennessee woodland owners fail to attain high returns from their property because they lack adequate knowledge of the basic principles of forest finance and the wood products business. Current and future owners stand to substantially increase profits through the establishment of coherent management goals based upon appropriate financial strategies. The premise of woodlands portfolio management is to help woodland owners better understand forest management principles through the comparative use of common forestry and investment concepts and terminology.

For most owners, the optimum strategy for enhancing forest values and for making substantially more money from their woodlands is to strive for:

MORE TREES, because an average acre of Tennessee woodlands contains far fewer trees than the land should be capable of supporting, plus trees planted on open land often yield surprisingly high investment returns;

BIGGER TREES, because large trees bring premium prices in the market place;

AND BETTER TREES, as straight, tall trees with few defects are becoming scarce. This scarcity causes the remaining trees to bring astonishingly high prices in both domestic and export markets.

Roughly eighty percent of Tennessee's woodlands are privately owned. However, a historic lack of sound, long term forest management has caused potential woodland income to decline statewide. Informed management strategies coupled with intelligent business decisions can generate dramatically higher profits for serious woodland investors.