Page 18 - Georgia Forestry - Summer 2017

Seedling Grower - International Forest Company
Wayne Bell
resistant trees,” Bell said. “After working on it over a 10-year period in the 80s, we had figured it out, but there was no market for the product. People didn’t want to pay the increased price.”
Since then, IFCO has been at the forefront — along with ArborGen and other compa- nies — in promoting the value of increased genetics. In 2003, the company made the deci- sion to focus heavily on the production of containerized seedlings because landowners wanted to see less risk of seedling failure while gaining increased genetics. Today,
IFCO’s annual container pro- duction has increased from 20 million initial seedlings to a current 2016 level of 94 million.
Wayne noted that the biggest challenge to the long-term sustainability of Georgia’s working forests is maintaining healthy markets for forest products.
“People will not grow trees unless they have a market,” Bell said. “They can grow them for a lot of reasons but they’re not going to try to sell trees unless there’s a market. We’ve been fortunate in Georgia, I think, but we can’t take that for granted.”
Moultrie, GA
The strongest part of the story of Geor- gia’s working forests is that they are a sus-
tainable, renewable resource. Forestland has steadily in- creased in Georgia since the 1950s. Thanks to reforestation efforts and healthy markets for timber, we are removing 48 percent less than is har- vested annually.
Now, with increased genet- ics, the seedling industry is
providing trees that grow faster, straighter and stronger than ever before. According to Wayne Bell of International Forest Company (IFCO) in Moultrie, it has taken a lot of effort to build consensus around increased genetics.
“It was in the late 70s when we decided to expand our business to study the genetics of seedlings through cloning and rootstock cuttings, focus- ing on creating fusiform rust
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16 | GEORGIA FORESTRY