What would you like to see happen the land? Is there another economic land use that would contribute more to the community?
Broadleaf would be an option. And so would farming. Without derailing this thread, there are several issues:
1. If my next door neighbour dies and his land is being sold, and I go to the bank to borrow the money, the bank will not lend the money to me if I am going to farm it, even if I can show in my farm accounts, that I have the capacity to meet the repayments. They will only lend the money to me to buy it if I am going to plant it and set the term of my loan against the forestry premiums.
2. If my next door neighbour dies and his nephew in Dublin inherits the land, he has 2 options. 1. Sell it or 2. plant it. If he sells it, he has a lump sum. If he plants it with sika spruce then he has an investment which can probably give a 100% low tax return over 20 years and he still retains ownership of the land. On top of that, once established after a year or 2, there's no maintenance of sika spruce compared to broadleaf.
It's a tough situation for a lot of young people in our area that want to expand their farms - and there are quite a few. Land values are not that high, but it's extremely difficult to get finance to buy land that you want to farm. Around our own farm, there was a 25 acre plot of land planted in 2012 which runs almost to my back door. I tried to persuade the person who inherited it to sell it to me, even offered them a good bit more than land was going in the area for it, but the return from forestry was just too big of lure for them. We have a shared laneway which gives me access to my land an an old house. Every second field along this laneway belongs to me and now, every second field has trees in it which will soon leave a lot of my fields boxed in by trees.
It's a common theme around here. What does forestry contribute to our community? Well, it ensures that young people can't buy land and live and farm in the area. People don't like living in forests, so the majority of houses that were on farms that were planted are closed up and not lived in - many falling down at this stage. It gives a few day's wages per acre for a few men to plant and fence the land. Machines come in to thin the forests - the latest guys came from laois. Most of the harvested timber is brought by lorry to Murray's in Galway for sawing and many of the narrower roads around here are in very poor shape because of the volume of heavy lorries that use them to extract trees.
I personally feel that it takes far more from our community than it contributes. At least with broadleaf, we would have wildlife, birds, bees etc. 40% of forestry payments related to forestry in the county was paid to people with addresses outside the county. So aside from farmers feeling disaffected etc, 40% of a massive forestry premium went out of the county. Cash from wood sales goes out of the county. The 2 sawmills in the county only saw a very small volume of timber and 8) of harvested wood is sawn outside the county. Forestry a contribution to the county? It's more of a drain!