Regional farm forestry industries: Potential dimensions and possible outcomes

Forestry is being redefined to meet a broad range of economic, environmental and social expectations in many countries, including Australia. A notable feature of this process is the increasing importance given to farm forestry by industry and government. However, farm forestry is still in its infancy in Australia and research into the potential dimensions of this land-use and the possible outcomes is only at a preliminary stage. Given unfavourable soils and low rainfall in much of Australia, and uncertain long-term economic returns in traditional forestry regions, it is understandable that adoption of farm forestry has been slow, and viable self-sustaining regional farm forestry industries are still emerging. As landholders and industrial processors contribute to farm forestry development, it is reasonable to expect diverse farm forestry industries to emerge—with diversity in terms of the scale of operations, capital investment, biophysical and socioeconomic elements, the nature and extent of involvement by various stakeholder groups, and the outcomes for those involved. In an attempt to understand the socio-economic outcomes of farm forestry for regional communities, four scenarios have been constructed of likely regional industries and the types of landholders likely to be involved. While it is reasonable that grower, industry and government stakeholders will have different expectations of farm forestry, these need not necessarily be incompatible. It is hoped that through better understanding of the possible socio-economic outcomes of regional farm forestry industries, strategies can be developed to ensure sufficient common ground emerges to satisfy the multiple objectives of the different stakeholder groups.