Collapse of the logging industry and rural communities with it

[peakbagger]

The Bangor Daily news in Bangor Maine is in the process of presenting three in depth articles on the loss of the logging industry in Maine's rural areas and the impact to the population. Interesting but depressing reading.

How small towns are disappearing
http://mainefocus.bangordailynews.com/2016/11/down-the-road/#.WEA4EY0zW9I
How its impacting small loggers
http://mainefocus.bangordailynews.com/2016/12/a-rift-in-the-woods/#.WEAzGI0zW9I

When I see the next one I will edit the thread.

I had a chance to talk to a wood buyer who worked as a forester in the region last week for many years. He has managed to scrape together a living but it sure sounded like he has to work for it . The pulp log market which supported the pulp mills in the region has just about collapsed, that and the decline in biomass power market has meant that about the only markets are for saw logs and without the markets for the low grade stuff most landowners are leaving their woods alone. Locally I used to pay a premium for firewood as I was competing with the pulp market but currently the price of green fire wood grade logs has dropped substantially. Since there are ski areas and second homes as well as a lot of campgrounds in the region, there is still a niche market for high grade seasoned hardwood but it doesn't take a lot of pulp trucks to satisfy the demand.

There are occasional attempts to build new pellet mills but unless they are co-located with a operation that generates edgings and sawdust, the regional demand is already satisfied so its race to the bottom on which plant is able to sell at the lowest cost. There is grumbling about exporting wood chips to Europe from Eastern Maine, but its very low margin business as all the chips have to be preprocessed with heat to kill and biological pests. A much publicized bio coal operation in Central Maine appears to have gone quiet as the developer behind it has worn out their welcome after extracting a lot of state money slated fro development into the pockets of investment firms.

 

[Lake Girl]

Interesting read and not dissimilar to the area where I live. The pulp mill is shuttered but we do have an OSB plant. Between here and Thunder Bay, they are producing pellets to fuel the generating station in Atikokan that used to be coal fired. The big logging operations are gone. A friend had his business that Grandpa started disintegrate without warning ... part of that was how the pulp mill owners handled the transition and were still encouraging investment by some of the loggers so they could feed the bio-mass generator. The same company owns the pulp mill in Thunder Bay that has diversified to produce industrial pellets for the GS in Atikokan. Still see some logging trucks but dwindling. Have a pulp trailer for sale ... Interested??

 

[peakbagger]

Yes its not just Maine, northern NH, Northeast VT and much of Northern NY and the maritime provinces have the same story. Things were looking up when carbon credits were being discussed as trees are a good source of renewable non fossil chemical feedstocks and transportation fuel but only when there is carbon market to keep oil dirt cheap.

 

[sportbikerider78]

States like NY are terrible for business. High local tax rate, high sales tax rate, high town tax rate, moderate home prices, and med-high state tax. Plus, NYS favors the employee on any and all legal issues. The employer is always wrong.

Companies take notice and go to states that actually want industry, jobs and manufacturing. Plus, those other states incentivize companies to move there. Win win for the company. Big loss for the locals left in that area that have no where to work.

Lets not forget that markets naturally change as well. Some little towns that have only one facility will go bust. That is just the way the market works. Another town likely went boom because of another industry.

There is no secret sauce. Make it affordable for people to live. Decrease the burden on the company. Lower taxes...companies come back. It is that simple. States like SC, NC, GA and TX have figured it out..companies left the northeast in droves to move there...still do.
ME is a beautiful state with some very hard working people in it. I lived in Bangor for 6 months and had about 55 people working for me. The easiest supervision role I have ever had! They just wanted to work and do the right thing.

 

[Lake Girl]

Bangor is the center for commercial activity in the northeastern and central regions of Maine. As such, the metropolitan area features a diversified economy. Unemployment rates are normally below state and federal levels. Over the past 10 years, total non-agricultural employment in the area has grown from 48,000 to more than 65,000. Major industries include services, wholesale/retail trade, and government, which together represent about 55 percent of the labor market. Other strong economic sectors include manufacturing, construction, finance, insurance, and real estate.

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/The-Northeast/Bangor-Economy.html#ixzz4RbxLQPSF

Service jobs can only be sustained based on other economic activity ... and those jobs are generally the lowest of pay. Ontario is much the same situation ... booming service industry but loss of manufacturing for a variety of reasons that boil down to high cost to do business (electric rates alone are a blight). Forestry in our area has suffered and attempts to find niche markets for value added goes bust with economic downtrends. Truss manufacturer had a good business for a while, economics changed and he disappeared because housing starts and renos stopped. Business was bought recently and restarted so we'll see how they do.

The thing that really concerns me more is the loss of agricultural jobs. We still have an active 4-H locally but more farm families are downsizing or quitting altogether. Children see their parents hard work for little value and don't want to stay. I'll have to track down the recent article but, due to lack of farm workers, food security is diminishing.

 

[peakbagger]

Bangor Daily acts as a statewide newspaper. There are two Maine's, the southern coastal counties and the rest of the state. Most of the population and political dollars are based in Portland and many Portlanders think that Bangor is in Northern Maine (it actually much closer to central Maine). The southern Maine papers are very biased to southern Maine. Bangor does have a fairly active economy but go 30 minutes north or west and 45 minutes east past University of Maine in Orono and it gets decidedly remote and poor. There is a tourist corridor south down to Ellsworth. Acadia National Park and the Jackson Lab which is big regional employer are in the area but sadly there have been three major pulp, pulp and paper or paper mills that have closed in the Bangor region in the last three years and all three are being scrapped. The work forces for the mills were older and many folks have retired or work out of the area as contractors.

Once east of Acadia National Park, the Maine Atlantic coast is decidedly rural, compared to elsewhere the waterfront is cheap so out of staters have bought all the waterfront. Just cross the road away from shorefront and you will find folks living in poverty. There are long term drug and alcohol issues in the area and more than few out of staters with shorefront second homes have come back and found there house stripped of copper piping and wiring when prices were high.

One of the standard sad comments is that at some point when local kids become teenagers, the parents have to have "the talk" with their kids. It not about sex its about that they have to leave home and never come back to live as there are no jobs for them locally. The armed services recruit a lot of smart kids who just don't have the means or the encouragement to go to college and most of them don't come back.

There are still back to landers who move north to Maine and the Amish and Menonite faiths are flocking to some areas of Maine to buy farms but the net population change is definitely negative.

 

[NateB]

Bangor is the center for commercial activity in the northeastern and central regions of Maine. As such, the metropolitan area features a diversified economy. Unemployment rates are normally below state and federal levels. Over the past 10 years, total non-agricultural employment in the area has grown from 48,000 to more than 65,000. Major industries include services, wholesale/retail trade, and government, which together represent about 55 percent of the labor market. Other strong economic sectors include manufacturing, construction, finance, insurance, and real estate.

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/The-Northeast/Bangor-Economy.html#ixzz4RbxLQPSF

Service jobs can only be sustained based on other economic activity ... and those jobs are generally the lowest of pay. Ontario is much the same situation ... booming service industry but loss of manufacturing for a variety of reasons that boil down to high cost to do business (electric rates alone are a blight). Forestry in our area has suffered and attempts to find niche markets for value added goes bust with economic downtrends. Truss manufacturer had a good business for a while, economics changed and he disappeared because housing starts and renos stopped. Business was bought recently and restarted so we'll see how they do.

The thing that really concerns me more is the loss of agricultural jobs. We still have an active 4-H locally but more farm families are downsizing or quitting altogether. Children see their parents hard work for little value and don't want to stay. I'll have to track down the recent article but, due to lack of farm workers, food security is diminishing.

Lake Girl does NW Ontario have a death tax? (A tax of your estate is owed to the government when you die) We have that in Pennsylvania, and it was the death of many family farms. The next thing you will see in your area is investment groups will buy up the farm land, and build houses where they think they will sell, and begin petroleum farming the rest (using chemicals to grow GMO crops). After that your waterways will get polluted, and the clean up will begin. If your area follows ours. Buy some land while you can afford it, and grow sustainable food.

 

[Lake Girl]

We sure do have a death tax ... just went up higher in 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/christine-van-geyn/estate-administration-tax-_b_8185338.html
A new gold mine bought up a fairly sizeable portion of farm land to the west of us. Not sure what long term effects will be. I'm happy my water comes from upstream of the site.

Not overly impressed with GMO crops but it seems that whether you plant them or not, they infiltrate your own crop through the help of wind and bees. Followed a court case in the prairies pitting Monsanto vs. local farmer. He got to keep his farm but ultimately lost his case and had to pay the licensing fee because he kept the seeds with the altered genetics for Round-up resistance even though he had never planted it in his fields. Multi-generation seed science destroyed...

As to young people moving away, happens. Some of my kids friends have come back to the area after being away for education, experience. Not everyone can cope in larger cities. Of our six children, only one is still home and she will likely move as her boyfriend is not in this area. The rest are in larger cities about 4 hours away...

 

[sportbikerider78]

Not overly impressed with GMO crops but it seems that whether you plant them or not, they infiltrate your own crop through the help of wind and bees. Followed a court case in the prairies pitting Monsanto vs. local farmer. He got to keep his farm but ultimately lost his case and had to pay the licensing fee because he kept the seeds with the altered genetics for Round-up resistance even though he had never planted it in his fields. Multi-generation seed science destroyed...

Monsanto gets subsidies and has huge lobbying dollars to throw around. Never mind the fact that people jump back and forth between government and private constantly. There are no checks and balances. Much is the same with government and drug companies.

 

[kennyp2339]

Never mind the fact that people jump back and forth between government

Wow - that was eye opening, truth be told..you control the food your control everything.

 

[firefighterjake]

Well hell . . .I live in Central Maine . . . and work in Bangor, Maine.

Now I'm just downright depressed . . . guess I didn't realize I was living in the backside of Poorsville. Some of you folks make Bangor sound like a blighted Big City . . . well small town . . . when actually Bangor itself is doing pretty well. Granted, there are not a ton of the big business jobs coming in and don't get me wrong, we'd love to have a large company come in and set up shop, but in the meantime there are a lot of enterprising folks employing a few folks here and there who are making a go of things . . . many of these folks being folks of the younger generations.

And yes, the woods industry has and is changing . . . but it is not dead yet . . . it is just changing and sadly there will be some folks who will have to adjust. While some towns are hit especially hard (i.e. mill towns where the mills have closed) folks are still out there making a living in the woods. Last winter my neighbor hired a guy who came in for a few weeks to chip some of his property . . . about three weeks ago I ran into a family friend who makes a living trucking wood who said he is still busy -- while he still needs to balance out what he hauls and when, depending on the mill's needs, he is still out there making a living (although he said demand for pulp wood has slacked off, pine for boards is still in high demand) . . . and for the past two or three weeks a property owner across from my Amish neighbor has been hauling out tree length wood -- both hardwood and wood for lumber.

And no, I am not a complete Pollyanna . . . better paying jobs are always needed, many younger residents will move out of state for employment and there is poverty, a drug problem, etc. . . . but all is not gloom and doom.

 

[sportbikerider78]

Wow - that was eye opening, truth be told..you control the food your control everything.

The unholy collusion of government and private business (banking, agriculture, and medicine) is our biggest downfall as a nation right now. Bailouts, payoffs, regulations that only benefit one company while putting others out of business..it is happening all the time and has to stop. It is bad for all of us and only benefits the super powerful..private and public.

 

[begreen]

Monsanto gets subsidies and has huge lobbying dollars to throw around. Never mind the fact that people jump back and forth between government and private constantly. There are no checks and balances. Much is the same with government and drug companies.

View attachment 189271

Neither on point for the logging industry, nor objective. For sure revolving door politics is a cancer eating away at our govt.. We can agree on that point. But Monsanto is an equal opportunity monster. Lots of folks from both sides of the aisle feeding on this, though one side seems to get the most money, year after year.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cmte=C00042069

This is ash can material. But that no longer exists.