Video: Timber One of the Largest Sectors of Mississippi’s Economy

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NOXUBEE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) -In the western part of Noxubee County, experts survey a section of timber they refer to as a “stand”, on property owned by Barge Products. A decision has to made concerning the right time to harvest trees brought to their mill and later distributed to the market place. When it comes to these natural resources, the industry remains strong.

“It contributes to over 63,000 jobs in the state. And all that originates, with the ability to be able to go and cut timber and transport it to publicly paid for roads and getting it to a point where it can be manufactured into a product. And manufactured further into valuated products.”
“Its very sustainable what we are trying to grow. And produce a very high quality lumber product here that will be either, when I say either southern yellow pine, that will be lob lolly or short leaf predominately.”

At Barge Timberlands in Noxubee County, trees are grown to a desired need to maximize the profit margin. The timber crop is kept free from disease, bugs, and pine beetles. The ideal product at Barge must have a consistent growth pattern where there are no limbs.

“And once we get that cleared up or the stems of those trees cleared up through holding those stands of those trees very dense, then as they start growing they are putting on clear material. So you don’t have a lot of knots. And that’s what our product mix consists of. Lot of times that’s what we are trying to grow is a knot free type lumber product.”

The size, age, and genetic makeup of the timber must be a consideration as they get the crop ready to make decorative products for the export market.

“If its ready to be harvested, that’s basically if they have reached a diameter that makes a lot of sense that we can, it will yield the product mix that we are looking for. It will yield the quality we are looking for and its pretty much got to the size that we don’t want it to get any bigger.”
“Over the past year we’ve seen a 20 percent increase in saw timber prices. So you got housing, the lumber, then the timber; We have seen a twenty percent increase in saw timber prices and that’s the first four consecutive quarters of increases that we’ve seen since the recession.”

R. H. Brown WCBI News.