Logging and Family Forests

Understanding the Amazon Timber Industry


Bandsaw cuts log into lumber

Logging is a key part of frontier expansion in the Amazon, and part of our research in the region focuses on the dynamics of logging and how to increase governance in this sector. In particular, we are examining how road paving can impact transport costs and installed sawmill capacity, and we have developed four major research projects help us understand this subject.

Developing a Logging Model for the Amazon

As part of the Amazon Scenarios model, we are developing a logging model for the Amazon. This model attempts to estimate potential logging profits for the extraction of three different grades of timber in response to transportation and milling costs and installed sawmill capacity. The data for this model came from extensive surveys of the industry in Brazil to determine costs for harvest, transportation and milling, and we are beginning similar surveys in Bolivia and Peru.

Projected logged areas in the year 2050 for high value (light green), medium value (yellow), and low value timber (pink).

Timber Industry Management and Practices

Bucking a log into transportable lengths

Regardless of product, good management decisions require accurate information. This is particularly true of the timber industry in the Brazilian Amazon, where profit margins are tightening due to dwindling supplies of raw material, increased competition, tougher environmental legislation and more enforcement. We are carrying out timber industry surveys in the Brazilian states of Pará, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, and Acre to understand what variables most significantly impact the industry to determine harvest, milling and transport costs.


Loading logs onto a truck

We are also examining the main factors affecting industrialization and technology adoption in the Brazilian forest sector. We have discovered that technological improvements and more efficient practices tend to be concentrated in older frontier areas (30 years or older), where extraction costs are higher. Ninety six percent of the logging in the Amazon occurs on the old and intermediate frontiers (10 –30 years) with the remaining four percent occurring in new frontiers, principally Novo Progresso and northern Mato Grosso.

The role of small holders in the timber economy

Truck loaded to transport logs to sawmill

We are trying to understand the role of smallholders in the Amazon logging cycle. We have completed a database of about 3,500 smallholders and have begun modeling price and timber supply for smallholders in the Transamazon region where 40,000 families have been formally and informally resettled in the last three decades, on parcels of approximately 100 hectares. We have estimated potential volume of timber on smallholder’s lands and in the INCRA lands (Institute of Colonization and Agriculture Reform) that might be used for future settlements.

The Family Forest Model


Timber Management planning

Finally, we are evaluating a new type of relationship that has developed between smallholders and commercial logging companies practicing sustainable forest management, in migrant settlements areas near the Transamazon. Smallholders are entering into formal forest management contracts in which the logging company agrees to clear land, remove timber, and in some cases to harvest periodically from the remaining part of the lot, in exchange for paying a fee and providing community improvements. Smallholders individually benefit from savings in labor time throughout the year (land does not need to be cleared by the household), but the community as a whole may benefit if logging improves infrastructure such as roads needed for timber removal and processing. Labor savings allow diversion of family members toward other productive activities. Improved infrastructure may increase access to markets and off-farm labor opportunities. We are examining the impact of these forest management contracts on smallholder decision-making. We are primarily interested in decisions regarding labor use, production of crops, and land clearing at the household level.

Milling logs in the forest

We find that forest management contracts lead smallholders to a decrease in crop production, suggesting a temporary shift in production activities as logging occurs. We also find that these interactions between smallholders and industry have not led to increased deforestation.

In addition, we have found that smallholders who have entered into formal forest management contracts are more likely to participate in community associations, and are also more likely to rank the association positively, than individuals living in other communities. These results confirm the potential role for forest management in stimulating the socio-economic development of smallholder communities on the Amazon frontier since effective community associations can bind settler families together and speed socio-economic development.