Are trees the next canola

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

At Prince Albert’s Saskatchewan Forest Centre, the future is one in which we can see the forest, and the trees. The centre is working on research that may one day create an agroforestry industry that parallels our current conventional agriculture sector.

“We are optimistic that there will be new developments which will make trees a viable choice among the options in the farming system,” says SFC Business Development Manager Doug Currie. “It is reminiscent of the evolution of canola or pulse crops. When you look at the acreages in production of those crops today versus where we started, and how long it took, 20 years doesn’t seem like a long time.”

The 20 years Currie refers to is the current production horizon for hybrid poplar, the most common farmed tree species.

“If we could get the 20-year horizon on poplar down to 18 or 15 years, there would be a substantial change in the economics,” says Currie. “The economics we’ve studied suggest that, looking back at the past 25 years, a producer could make more money in poplars than in wheat.”

The Saskatchewan Forest Centre was created as a non-profit corporation in 2001. Its mandate is to promote the acquisition, creation and dissemination of knowledge to expand Saskatchewan’s forest industry in a sustainable fashion.

The centre’s core approach is to create partnerships that allow knowledge and technology to be brought to Saskatchewan and made available to companies and producers in the agroforestry sector. The SFC recently received a $100,000 sustaining grant from Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food.

“We are an organization that is partner-based, and we have leveraged the partner expertise to improve our ability to bring technology here for producers,” says Doug Currie. “Our focus is growing trees on farms, to make money.”

Currie cites partnerships with groups like the University of Saskatchewan, the PFRA, the Saskatchewan Research Council and Ducks Unlimited as the kind of relationships that allow the SFC to foster scientific co-operation and information exchange on agroforestry to the benefit of Saskatchewan.

“We jointly released a strategy on agroforestry with the university,” says Currie. “It outlines the steps we believe have to happen to move the industry forward, including more dedicated research and development programs focused on the commercial aspects of tree production.”

Currie says Saskatchewan enjoys one huge advantage over most jurisdictions looking at commercial tree production: available land mass.

“You’ve got relatively low land costs, and competition for land is less,” says Currie. “Around any given point where a production facility is located, if, within a hour’s drive you plant two per cent of the land to trees, you can support an engineered wood plant. That might mean an industry creating 100 to 200 local jobs.”

In addition to farming trees for wood, new markets are opening up to use agroforestry for the production of biomass to create energy, and as a highly efficient carbon sink for the emerging world trade in carbon credits.

“Trees will sequester the equivalent of as much as five to eight tons of carbon dioxide per acre per year,” says Currie. “The value of that carbon sink could make the difference in the early years of a tree operation by providing some cash flow.”

The Saskatchewan Forestry Centre is currently associated with approximately 50 demonstration sites of tree farming throughout the province.

For more information, contact:
Doug Currie, Business Development Manager
Saskatchewan Forest Centre
Phone: (306) 765-2840