Plantation Sustainability
Economic
Economic contribution of plantations
National
Plantation forestry has grown to dominate Australia’s forestry and timber industries, which have a combined annual value of turnover of some $ 18 billion.
Plantations supplied 62% of the logs harvested from Australia’s native forests and plantation in 2004-05. Those logs are used to make sawn timber, fibreboard, particleboard, plywood, paper and other products.
Plantations are providing increasing rural employment opportunities with over $3 billion worth of capital investment planned for wood processing capacity to be added to existing timber and paper mills over the next five years. Over 14,000 people are employed in growing and managing plantations. A similar number is involved in timber processing and services.
In 2005 plantations occupied 1.74 million hectares, the equivalent of less than 7% of the land used by non-grazing agricultural and horticultural crops. Despite this small proportion, plantation industry turnover is now larger than each of the sugar, cotton and wine grape industries. By 2010 it is predicted to be the same size as the sheep meat industry (67% now), 80% of the wool industry (64% now) and 60% of the size of the dairy industry (43% now). Additional to this is the income generated by the integrated timber processing sectors and the value of timber exports.’
Source: Australia’s Plantations 2006 (pdf), Bureau of Rural Sciences.
