Originally Posted by timbercruiser
It depends on so many different factors it is impossible to guess. Use to we used about $3200 as a guide on a loblolly stand with a 28 year rotation. Now you can't get a paper mill or sawmill to give you a guaranteed delivery price for a month.

I looked at a logging job this morning in south Alabama that surprised me a little. It was a 18 year old longleaf plantation planted in old peanut fields, very good dirt. Dang stuff won't grow. The landowner couldn't find anybody that would give a price per ton doing a thinning, so he is clear cutting it and chipping it. It was in a government program of some kind, but the time had lapsed.
He figures he can stump it and get $140+ per acre rent as agriculture fields. By the way, across the highway on similar dirt was some loblolly that is probably the same age or less. It has been thinned already and has some very good chip-n-saw standing. I'm not saying all longleaf is like that, but I can show you plenty of it that is.

It's going to cost him a ton of money to stump it and get it clean enough to row crop it.
I currently sell machines for this very application and per acre it's anywhere from $1500 to $2100 depending on the removal of any huge hardwoods, are stumpseverywhere or are they rowed, and getting the site cleared well enough not to do damage to the farmers planting and harvesting equipment, much less whomever it is, the farmer or landowner, that has to get the soil right so it will be able to grow peanuts, etc. He can go the less expensive " bulldozer and windrow and burn route" but that may take a very long time. Time is money.


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