harvesting & utilization Minnesota’s Logging Businesses: An Assessment of the Health and Viability of the Sector Charles R. Blinn, Tim J. O’Hara, Dave T. Chura, and Matthew B. Russell With the closure of several mills within the state, industrial procurement managers became concerned about the status and trends of Minnesota’s logging sector. A mail survey and follow-up focus groups were conducted to assess the health and viability of the sector. Although there are many logging businesses producing up to 5,000 cords annually, those businesses produce a small percentage of the total annual volume harvested, have the oldest equipment, work during the winter, and are operating at the lowest level of their reported capacity. Over time, there has been a trend toward larger producers who harvest an increasing percentage of the total annual volume harvested. Business owners are keeping their equipment longer than in the past, which has both positive and negative effects. Although those small logging businesses will continue to have a niche with private landowners in the future, it is likely that their number will continue to decline and that there will be continued growth of producers harvesting 15,000 cords annually. To be successful in the future, the logging sector will need to help itself and will need assistance from public forest management agencies, procurement mills, and lending institutions. Keywords: operating capacity, wood supply chain, production, season of harvest, logging equipment L ogging businesses play a critical role in the wood supply chain, providing wood to mills for use in the manufacture of various forest products. Thus, access to information about logging businesses is important to policymakers, land management agencies, procurement mills, logger training organizations, and log- ger and forest products associations. Across the United States, a national assessment was conducted (Anonymous 2011) and several states have collected baseline and/or ongoing information about logging businesses (e.g., Egan and Taggart 2004a, 2004b, Goldstein et al. 2005, Rickenbach et al. 2005, Milauskas and Wang 2006, Allen et al. 2008, Baker and Greene 2008, Egan 2009, 2011, Traver 2012, Traver et al. 2013). Combining data from a number of log- ging business surveys, Taylor and Barynin (2013) indicated that the wood supply chain is working through a unique set of conditions because of the long decline in wood consumption associated with the economic recession. The last review of the logging sector in Minnesota was conducted by Powers (2004). Since then, annual harvest levels dropped by approximately 1 million cords (27%) between 2003 and 2011 (Minnesota Department of Natural Resources [MN DNR] 2006, 2012). Four oriented strand/structural board mills were closed per- manently and one roof felt mill was shut down for several years, lowering demand and making it more difficult to market some species. Concerns were expressed by procurement managers about the status and capacity of Minnesota’s loggers. To better understand the health and viability of Minnesota’s logging sector, a mail survey and focus groups were conducted. This article summarizes some of the results from those assessments. Approach Data were initially collected in 2012 using a mail survey of Min- nesota’s logging business owners that assessed the status of this sec- tor in 2011. Because the survey was designed to provide a broad overview of many factors without assessing the rationale for re- sponses, focus groups with business owners and industrial procure- ment staff were subsequently conducted in 2013 to provide addi- tional insight. Each approach is briefly described below. An exemption from review for both surveys was received from the in- stitutional review board at the University of Minnesota. Additional details about the surveys are available in Blinn et al. (2014). Mailed Surveys A mail survey was designed and administered using standard mail survey procedures (Dillman 2000) to collect data similar to those in Manuscript received January 25, 2014; accepted June 9, 2014; published online July 17, 2014. Affiliations: Charles R. Blinn (cblinn@umn.edu), University of Minnesota, Forest Resources, St. Paul, MN. Tim J. O’Hara (tjohara@aol.com), Minnesota Forest Industries. Dave T. Chura (dchura@mlep.org), Minnesota Logger Education Program. Matthew B. Russell (russellm@umn.edu), University of Minnesota. Acknowledgments: This research was supported by Minnesota Forest Industries, the Minnesota Logger Education Program, the University of Minnesota Department of Forest Resources, the University of Minnesota Extension, and the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station under Projects MN 42-42 and MN 42-57. We thank the Minnesota Forest Industries Forestry Affairs Committee and AgStar Financial Services for input during survey design, logging business owners who responded to the mail survey, Jane Abel and Chris DeRosier for their assistance managing the survey process and data entry, and the industrial procurement staff and logging business owners who participated in the focus groups. APPLIED RESEARCH For. Sci. 61(2):381–387 http://dx.doi.org/10.5849/forsci.14-013 Copyright © 2015 Society of American Foresters Forest Science • April 2015 381