Wood products investigation - what we learned

The backstory

In the fall of 2014 we helped our partner community Arimae thin out its own reforestation project. The stand had not been properly thinned since it was established about 17 years ago, and the overcrowding was preventing development of the more viable trees.

While we wanted to help the community improve its own forestry projects—which will in turn yield more profit for the community down the road—we also wanted the experience of managing a thinning, called raleo in Spanish. With our earliest investor-owned forests approaching eight years, they would soon need their own raleo, and working with the community's project was a low-risk way to cut our teeth. We held numerous meetings with the community, and completed a profit sharing agreement that would compensate them once we sold the wood to a buyer. 

The raleo

Over the course of a few months beginning in late 2014, our field team of laborers and our foreman felled the smaller trees, aggregated them into pickup points and hauled them to the road using horses, tractors, and their own manpower. From there they loaded them into trucks and carted them a couple miles down the road to a storage facility. 

Workers Load a Spanish Cedar Log into the truck.

Workers Load a Spanish Cedar Log into the truck.

We expected to quickly find a buyer for the roughly 10,000 board feet of mahogany, spanish cedar and spanish oak on our hands. But with the market saturated with cheap, illegally harvested timber from the Darien, we found low demand for our smaller-diameter timber. Initially, we worked with a small indigenous organization who was exporting logs on behalf of the nearby indigenous reservations. Soon after we started working with them, they closed and we then worked with local connections and posted ads in local publications to gin up leads. At the same time, we pursued leads with our own international contacts to export the timber after necessary processing in Panama. All of these efforts failed to generate an economically viable and real sale of the timber.

Taking matters into our own hands

Sitting on the wood for 9 months was frustrating because we were paying to store the wood, and the community wanted their share of the profit that we anticipated turning on the wood. With no guarantee that we would be able to sell the wood anytime soon, we bought out the community's stake, making us the full owners of the logs. 

Logs delivered to the holding location

Logs delivered to the holding location

To get the most value from the raw logs we now owned, we would have to invest in processing the logs into lumber, and then process them further into finished products. Then, we'd have to get those products to market. In other words, we'd need to participate in each step in the value chain: milling, drying, processing, transporting, designing, manufacturing, exporting and marketing finished products. 

Could we evolve from a forestry project developer into a company selling consumer products with a sexy story?

Researching options for production in Panama

In October 2015 I, along with our field supervisor Francisco and field coordinator Yem, visited numerous woodshops in the Darién to pose the idea of making wooden products for us on contract. Of the roughly ten we visited, we deemed that a couple of them had the right equipment, organization and level of interest to work. We promised to come back to them with more detailed design parameters and instructions. Knowing that there was an opportunity to work with local labor, and for a reasonable price, was a good first step. 

What are the most popular products?

But we also wanted to know what the potential demand for the products might be. In November 2015 we published a voting page on our website, displaying wooden products representative of those we could potentially make with the logs. We attempted to post products that were diverse, but also that could be realistically made given the limitations of the log dimensions and the current work being produced by the woodshops in Panama. We asked people to vote on their favorites to gauge which would be the most likely to sell if we were to make them. After several weeks of voting, we knew the favorites: cheese boards, candle holders and coasters. 

While understanding the demand for these existing products was useful, we would also be competing with all the other cheese boards, candle holders and coasters out there. 

New ideas with product designers

To explore new product concepts, I conducted a five-week project with seven product design students (juniors and seniors) and my former design professor at Virginia Tech. The goal was to generate new product ideas based on the characteristics of the wood in Panama, and the Panamanian woodworkers’ existing equipment and working style. Students began with loose concept sketches, refined them based on feedback, and eventually produced prototypes of their products. Here are some of their ideas.

The sale happened after all

And this is as far as we got. As we continued testing the waters for finished products strategy, we finally found someone interested in buying the raw wood. We debated about keeping the wood and continuing to push on the products strategy, but ultimately decided that selling the wood and cutting our losses made more sense than investing in the daunting process of launching a wooden products line.

We appreciate everyone who participated in our products survey on our website, the Virginia Tech design students who worked with me on new product concepts, and the woodworkers in Panama for their willingness to hear our ideas. 

Arimae finally gains legal title to its land

Arimae receives its land title during a ceremony in the community. Photo courtesy of El Siglo.

Arimae receives its land title during a ceremony in the community. Photo courtesy of El Siglo.

After a long struggle, our partner community Arimae finally received its land title from the government of Panama. We’ve been working with Arimae since 2007 and currently have 15 hectares of timber plantations on their land.

The biggest benefit to having a land title is that now the community doesn’t have to enter into judicial processes every time it wants to expel squatters from their territory. Defending their territory from squatters has always been difficult because the Pan-American highway cuts through the middle of it, allowing for easy access. The land title covers more than 20,000 acres, more than half of it forested.

One of our founders, Damion Croston, lived in Arimae between 2004-2006 and learned firsthand about its struggles over the decades to secure its land title. Subsequently, our land lease payments helped to support the community financially by covering the costs of many trips by leaders to government offices and legal fees. However, our contribution was minor compared to the time and financial resources the community’s leaders and members invested to secure their title.  

Colleagues at the Rainforest Foundation US who provided support to the community during their struggle posted this blog about the formal ceremony the community held when they received the official title from the government.

We congratulate Arimae on their success, and are happy that they can now focus their time and resources on strengthening their community culturally and economically.

Read more about the story (in Spanish) on Panamá’s El Siglo website.

Launching wooden product line - Vote your favorites

Today we kicked off the first stage of a campaign to offer finished wooden products, and we're starting by asking you which are your favorites. We'll move forward with the products that are the most popular.

The "voting" stage is the first phase of a broader campaign,  whose eventual goal is to provide people in the U.S. handcrafted wooden items for the home, made by talented Panamanian woodworkers. By employing Panamanian woodworkers to create the products--instead of shipping the raw lumber to the U.S.--more of the value of these precious woods stays in the Darien.

Most of the wood that leaves the Darien--one of the few remaining biodiversity hotspots in Central America--ends up going straight into Panama City, with minimal processing, and minimal benefit to the local economy. If we can succeed in connecting consumers with woodshops in Panama, then more of the value of these beautiful woods stays in local communities.

The indigenous Emera and Wounaan communities safeguard some of the last remaining stocks of the coveted cocobolo wood (dalbergia retusa). The trees are culturally and economically important for these groups because they provide the wood for their incredible carvings. Unfortunately, cocobolo trees are increasingly poached by opportunistic loggers and settlers, depriving the communities of a valuable resource. If we succeed in stimulating the demand for their carvings, then perhaps the communities will invest more in their traditional artistry and redouble their efforts to protect their cocobolo stocks . 

 

ETFRN Issue 57: Effective forest and farm producer organizations

European Tropical Forest Research Network issue focuses on organizations that work with smallholder farmers and forest-dependent peoples.

The European Tropical Forest Research Network recently released its 57th issue, focusing on effective forest and farm producer organizations. The issue is a compilation of case studies from organizations that represent the collective voices of farmers and forest-dependent peoples, indigenous groups and rural communities.

We wrote a sidebar on page 196 of the report which covers our plantain intercropping efforts over the past two years to increase near-term revenue.

Vote for OpenForests to win the MIT Climate Colab Competition

Photo by Yves Picq

Photo by Yves Picq

We were honored to be included as a key collaborator of OpenForests as part of their submission to MIT’s Climate Colab Competition on Land Use and climate change. OpenForests’ submission was selected as one of ten semi-finalists.

Planting Empowerment and OpenForest began our collaboration a few years ago when PE when we listed one of the first projects on OpenForests' forest investment marketplace. The marketplace showcases timber plantation projects that meet their best-of-class social and environmental criteria.

For the Climate Colab Competition, OpenForests is pitching their sustainable forestry management platform that connect forest investors with information on the financial and biological progress of their projects. It’s a great tool that PE expects to use in the future as we streamline our reporting and plantation management processes.

The contest runs for a couple of more days and OpenForests needs your help to secure the popular vote. We encourage you (yes, somewhat selfishly) to vote for OpenForests’ submission. If they win, they will have the opportunity to present the project at MIT’s climate colab conference in early October.