Page 22 - Georgia Forestry - Winter2017
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age and on and on. I’ve modeled different scenarios based on, say, this price for saw timber vs. this price for pulpwood. Basically, our family understands that to keep and hold the land, you have to look at it financially.”
And as the Penningtons see it, the finances could be better.
“The reality is, wood is cheap right now,” Brooks III says.
“The prices for large timber are depressed due to over-supply and lack of competition. And if you keep waiting, some of your timber might get too big for the mills. So, we primarily grow and market Loblolly pine.”
At the moment, that decision is keeping their forestland enterprise afloat. But even that wouldn’t be enough, Brooks III points out, without reasonable taxation.
“The conservation programs, tax incentives and forestland protection programs that landowners can utilize are extremely important to keep our woodlands,” he says. “It’s important to tax the land as it’s being used, and not as if it’s a subdivision. If we were taxed at the rate of highest and best use, we would not be in the timber business, I can tell you without hesitation.”
But would the Penningtons still own forestland?
Absolutely, they say. And it would probably be their acreage with old growth trees, wildlife food plots (cul- tivated, of course, with Pennington Seed, a company founded by Brooks III’s father) and the hunting grounds that the family have trod together for generations.
For Brooks IV, financial stewardship and conservation are one and the same. “We’ve tossed around the term, ‘timber farming for wildlife,’” he says. “When we make certain decisions, as far as cutting or not cutting, or playing the market on a certain tract, it’s always about the benefit
to the wildlife in that area.
“And that’s my favorite part of this,”
he says. “Being an eighth-generation steward of this land.” ■
ELIZABETH LENHARD, A FREELANCE FEATURES JOURNALIST, FREQUENTLY WRITES ABOUT SOUTHERN FOOD AND CULTURE. SHE LIVES AND WORKS IN DECATUR, GA.
STEPHEN B. MORTON IS AN AWARD- WINNING PHOTOJOURNALIST WHOSE PHOTOGRAPHS CAPTURE THE
NEWS, EVENTS AND LIFESTYLES OF SOUTHERN CULTURE. HE IS BASED IN SAVANNAH, GA.
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