How Can the Government Help Loggers?
It has been hard to be excited about the woods lately, you know… we burn a lot of fuel and we all know what that equals right now. That being said, it isn’t just the fuel price that’s got loggers feeling blue and nervous…. Let me elaborate.
I’ve written a lot about having hope that the economy of logging will turn for the better. There is no group of trades people who hold onto that kind of hope more than loggers, fishermen, and farmers, but to be honest its getting hard, even for a crazy optimist like me. See, loggers and landowners are the last in the chain. Prices for oil, parts & services, fuel, insurance, professional services, etc can all get pushed down to the consumer. Logging contractors are HUGE consumers of these items. The only customer after us is the mills, but the mills set their price and they tend to be able to find someone to sell it to them for that… until they can’t. And now here we are. The loggers are leaving and we are watching it unfold right now. It isn’t one of those industries where when things get better you can flip a switch and a bunch of people will go invest in logging equipment. It is a very specialized skill to care for the woods and if we don’t keep them going now, the future is dead.
Unfortunately, our whole world seems to revolve around the government “helping” us. It is election season, so candidates are out and about trying to meet us and talk about our problems and asking how to “help”. They will pretend to care and then their policies and voting records will clearly prove they only tow party lines and don’t listen to their constituents. I thought maybe this little blog would reach some candidates around the state and country so I can give them a little insight on my opinions on how to to help…
Bring us to energy independence with DIESEL FUEL. There are no electric skidders, no electric tractor trailer trucks and horse and buggy isn’t going to cut it anymore. We don’t have any alternative. The sun isn’t fueling our machines and trees don’t cut, haul, and process themselves. Let us get American oil.
Make it very attractive and easy to rebuild our mills into something profitable. Incentivize Americans investing in America. I hold onto very little hope that our shattered mills will ever become anything again. The state does nothing with its policies to make it even remotely attractive to rebuild them. Control, control, control… that is what they do. More mills would mean more competition. In a free market, competition is key and if loggers and landowners can make good money on the wood, they will keep growing it. This will keep Maine forested because we will cut the trees just enough so they come back stronger and bigger…. then we get to cut again, and again, and again…. It seems like a fairly simple equation to me, but instead, they try to make some complicated and ridiculous carbon storage incentive. If the trees don’t have value to a logger or a landowner, I can assure you they shall be cleared and developed. I hear the real estate market is booming… once those trees are replaced with development, they are gone forever.
There you have it. It is a two step process. We don’t want tax payer money, we don’t want bandaids. We want a truly free market with less regulation on every teeny tiny thing we do.