The following ‘letter to the editor’ explains the reasons for putting ANU Market Report Project on hold. The letter appeared in Agroforestry News (2005, issue 51, page 27) and in Australian Forest Grower (2005, winter issue, page 33).

Dear Editor,

Independent assessment and voluntary feedback show that ANU Forestry Market Report Project has been regarded as a success. Also, work on the project has given me enormous job satisfaction. I am therefore a bit sad to inform you that the project is now on hold; there are unlikely to be any more market reports. This situation has come about because the project has faced a number of issues, which remain unresolved.

The issues dogging the project have been described by Bhati, Kanowski and Ragg in their paper presented at the 2002 Australian Forest Growers national conference held in Albany, and in the presentations elsewhere. Among those issues, the two most crucial ones are (1) insufficient flow of stumpage information from small-scale growers and (2) inadequate and non-ongoing funding for the project.

When ANU Forestry commenced the project in 1997 in association with Australian Forest Growers, the expectation was that small-scale growers would provide their stumpage data to the project. In turn, the project would calculate stumpage averages and trends, and make them public thorough market reports. This would help enhance transparency in the log market for farm forest growers — a high priority goal for industry. However, despite our efforts, most growers have not provided stumpage information. (A few growers did however contribute stumpage information, which has appeared as case studies in the market reports.) As a result, the project has failed to publish the stumpage averages and trends, which has been a big disappointment to me.

The project was supported for five and a half years by grants from the Joint Venture Agro-forestry Program, the Private Forestry Council of Victoria and the 2020 Vision. The project was entirely supported by ANU in the first and the final years. While the support of sponsors was invaluable and much appreciated, the overall level and continuity of funding were insufficient for the project to continue as envisaged.

Recently, various colleagues tried on our behalf to resolve the problems facing the project, but without any success. The lack of success led me to the conclusion that the work carried out by the project was no longer of high priority to industry, and therefore it was pointless to accord it a high priority myself. I therefore recommended that the project be put on hold. If industry would like the market report work to continue in its current or another format, then the person to contact is my Head of School: Professor Peter Kanowski, SRES (now Fenner School of Environment and Society), The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200; fax (02) 6125 0746; email: Peter.Kanowski@anu.edu.au

U.N. Bhati

(Email: un.bhati@anu.edu.au)

2 May 2005