Operating in a Fog
F&W Forestry’s Marshall Thomas on the Market Uncertainty Reshaping Georgia’s Forests — and the Decisions Landowners Can’t Afford to Delay
Spring 2026
By John Casey
Marshall Thomas has spent a career helping landowners make decisions about trees that won’t pay off for 20 or 30 years. He’s guided clients through hurricanes, housing busts and unprecedented markets. But when asked to describe
the current moment for Georgia’s timber sector, he reaches for a single word: uncertainty.
“We’re kind of operating in a fog right now,” Thomas said, invoking the words of retiring F&W Forestry Statesboro Manager Wade McDonald. “When you’re in a fog, it’s hard to see where to go.”
That fog has been thickened by a wave of pulp mill closures across the southern half of the state. In some areas, Thomas said, the issue is no longer about price. It’s about access.
“There are areas in southwest Georgia right now where we cannot sell pulpwood,” he said. “It’s not a matter of
price anymore. We actually don’t have access to a market.”
For Thomas, the loss of small wood markets carries consequences that run far deeper than a single revenue
stream. Without the ability to thin stands on schedule, timber stagnates. The crop trees — the larger saw timber that most Georgia landowners depend on for their real returns — can’t grow as fast or get as big.
“That pulpwood being out there becomes a liability,” he said, “in terms of restricting the growth of those crop trees.”
With pulpwood outlets shrinking, Thomas pointed to a longstanding F&W rule of thumb: where saw timber prices
are at least two and a half times the pulpwood price, you manage for saw timber.
By that measure, he said, nearly all of Georgia now qualifies. “So we are back to being a saw timber state — for the short term anyway.”
The 1.5 Million Threshold
Thomas has always watched housing starts as the industry’s most telling demand indicator, but he was careful to
avoid the prediction game — pointing out that forecasters have called for a housing recovery every year since 2008 and
been wrong nearly every time. Instead, he offered a benchmark. In the 1990s, the industry felt clear demand pressure when starts climbed above 1.2 million.
But as the market has shifted toward more multifamily construction — which uses roughly 40% of the lumber a single-family home requires — the bar has moved.
“We need housing starts to be at a sustained 1.5 million or better for a few years before we’re going to see an increase in
demand,” Thomas said. “Rather than forecast, I think it’s better to just focus on the number. Once we get to 1.5 million,
get hopeful.”
He pushed back on the idea that mortgage rates are the primary obstacle, noting that booms in the ’90s and early
2000s both occurred with rates around 6 to 6.5% — roughly where they sit today.
The bigger problem, he argued, is the combined weight of post-COVID inflation and regulatory costs driving up the
price of building a home.
An Industry in Exile
Some of Thomas’s most pointed observations concerned what he views as a decades-long policy failure: the effective
offshoring of America’s pulp and paper production. He traced the trend to a regulatory environment that has made
the U.S. increasingly inhospitable to smokestack industries, beginning with the Clean Water Act era. When Union
Camp built its mill at Eastover, South Carolina in 1984, he recalled, company officials believed it would be the last large
pulp mill constructed in the South — a prediction that proved largely accurate.
“We get mad at companies when they close mills,” he said. “But if the message they’re getting from the government and
the environmental community is ‘we don’t really care about your industry,’ it’s just a rational business decision for them
to buy the pulp from another country that likes pulp production.”
He drew a sharp contrast with Finland, which has built three new pulp mills in the last 20 years. The most recent,
opened in 2024, produces 1.5 million tons of pulp while generating tall oil for biodiesel, multiple chemical byproducts
and enough electricity to supply 2.5% of Finland’s power grid — all with zero fossil fuel inputs.
“Unfortunately, when our lawmakers look at our pulp mills, they’re looking at 100-year-old facilities,” Thomas said.
“Compare that to this mill in Finland, and I have to wonder if it wouldn’t really change the perspective.”
He also raised the national security dimension, pointing to the United Kingdom’s decision to launch massive
tree-planting programs after both World Wars when blockades exposed the country’s vulnerability from having no domestic timber.
“If we export all our pulp production to Brazil,” he asked, “how do we make toilet paper if Brazil decides they don’t want to send us any pulp?”
the current moment for Georgia’s timber sector, he reaches for a single word: uncertainty.
“We’re kind of operating in a fog right now,” Thomas said, invoking the words of retiring F&W Forestry Statesboro Manager Wade McDonald. “When you’re in a fog, it’s hard to see where to go.”
That fog has been thickened by a wave of pulp mill closures across the southern half of the state. In some areas, Thomas said, the issue is no longer about price. It’s about access.
“There are areas in southwest Georgia right now where we cannot sell pulpwood,” he said. “It’s not a matter of
price anymore. We actually don’t have access to a market.”
For Thomas, the loss of small wood markets carries consequences that run far deeper than a single revenue
stream. Without the ability to thin stands on schedule, timber stagnates. The crop trees — the larger saw timber that most Georgia landowners depend on for their real returns — can’t grow as fast or get as big.
“That pulpwood being out there becomes a liability,” he said, “in terms of restricting the growth of those crop trees.”
With pulpwood outlets shrinking, Thomas pointed to a longstanding F&W rule of thumb: where saw timber prices
are at least two and a half times the pulpwood price, you manage for saw timber.
By that measure, he said, nearly all of Georgia now qualifies. “So we are back to being a saw timber state — for the short term anyway.”
The 1.5 Million Threshold
Thomas has always watched housing starts as the industry’s most telling demand indicator, but he was careful to
avoid the prediction game — pointing out that forecasters have called for a housing recovery every year since 2008 and
been wrong nearly every time. Instead, he offered a benchmark. In the 1990s, the industry felt clear demand pressure when starts climbed above 1.2 million.
But as the market has shifted toward more multifamily construction — which uses roughly 40% of the lumber a single-family home requires — the bar has moved.
“We need housing starts to be at a sustained 1.5 million or better for a few years before we’re going to see an increase in
demand,” Thomas said. “Rather than forecast, I think it’s better to just focus on the number. Once we get to 1.5 million,
get hopeful.”
He pushed back on the idea that mortgage rates are the primary obstacle, noting that booms in the ’90s and early
2000s both occurred with rates around 6 to 6.5% — roughly where they sit today.
The bigger problem, he argued, is the combined weight of post-COVID inflation and regulatory costs driving up the
price of building a home.
An Industry in Exile
Some of Thomas’s most pointed observations concerned what he views as a decades-long policy failure: the effective
offshoring of America’s pulp and paper production. He traced the trend to a regulatory environment that has made
the U.S. increasingly inhospitable to smokestack industries, beginning with the Clean Water Act era. When Union
Camp built its mill at Eastover, South Carolina in 1984, he recalled, company officials believed it would be the last large
pulp mill constructed in the South — a prediction that proved largely accurate.
“We get mad at companies when they close mills,” he said. “But if the message they’re getting from the government and
the environmental community is ‘we don’t really care about your industry,’ it’s just a rational business decision for them
to buy the pulp from another country that likes pulp production.”
He drew a sharp contrast with Finland, which has built three new pulp mills in the last 20 years. The most recent,
opened in 2024, produces 1.5 million tons of pulp while generating tall oil for biodiesel, multiple chemical byproducts
and enough electricity to supply 2.5% of Finland’s power grid — all with zero fossil fuel inputs.
“Unfortunately, when our lawmakers look at our pulp mills, they’re looking at 100-year-old facilities,” Thomas said.
“Compare that to this mill in Finland, and I have to wonder if it wouldn’t really change the perspective.”
He also raised the national security dimension, pointing to the United Kingdom’s decision to launch massive
tree-planting programs after both World Wars when blockades exposed the country’s vulnerability from having no domestic timber.
“If we export all our pulp production to Brazil,” he asked, “how do we make toilet paper if Brazil decides they don’t want to send us any pulp?”
We get mad at companies when they close mills. But if the message they’re getting from the government and the environmental community is ‘we don’t really care about your industry,’ it’s just a rational business decision for them to buy the pulp from another country that likes
pulp production.”
— Marshall Thomas, President, F&W Forestry
The Replanting Question
For landowners on the ground — particularly the family forest owners with 2,000 acres or fewer who make up the
backbone of Georgia’s private forestland — the uncertainty has become deeply personal.
Thomas described a cascading set of pressures: declining markets, stubborn property taxes and the fundamental question of whether to replant at all.
In southwest Georgia, he said, farmers who interplant timber among their irrigation circles have begun walking away
from trees entirely, a trend that accelerated after Hurricane Michael sent $35-per-ton saw timber crashing to a
dollar or two.
“A lot of them are saying, ‘I’m not going to replant the trees. I’d rather do some dryland ag because I can’t count on the
markets to be there,’” Thomas said.
He described what he called “small landowner economics” — the near-term math that drives most family forest decisions.
After federal and state taxes, cost of sale and decades of property tax payments, the ask to then reinvest hundreds
of dollars per acre in replanting can feel steep.
“They start to look at it and say, ‘I grew that stand to make money and now I’m winding up with less than half of what I
sold it for in my pocket,’” he said.
Georgia’s property tax structure compounds the challenge. Unlike most southern states that tax timberland
based on productive capacity, Georgia’s Conservation Use Valuation Assessment is tied to fair-market land values — which have continued climbing even as timber revenues fall.
Large landowners, Thomas said, will continue harvesting — perhaps at reduced volumes. Small landowners tend to simply stop cutting and wait. And when they do replant, he says lower densities are the hedge, noting that advances in genetics have made southern pines grow so fast that even low-density plantations reach crown closure by seven or eight years.
A Market-Driven Landscape
Thomas sees the ecological stakes as inseparable from the economic ones. The landscape of the U.S. South, he argued, is fundamentally market-driven — and over long cycles, what grows on the land will reflect what the land can earn.
“If we don’t have a market for trees, slowly but surely our retention rate of forest is going to decline,” he said. “People
will plant grass and put cows on it. They might plant fruiting trees or row crops. Other uses will arrive.”
What makes the South distinctive, Thomas argued, is that its commercial forests use native species. When landowners
grow loblolly, slash or longleaf pine and manage those stands with thinning and prescribed fire, they recreate
ecological conditions remarkably close to the pre-European landscape.
“If we could lengthen rotation length in the South to 50 years, reintroduce fire and thin it, when you drove through the
South, you would be driving through a landscape similar to that encountered when the Europeans got here,” he said.
“And we can do that while producing trees.”
He contrasted that with Brazil, where native cerrado ecosystems and grasslands are being cleared for dense, short-rotation non-native eucalyptus monocultures. Thomas noted the irony that such conversions can qualify for FSC
certification, while clearcut-and-replant operations using native species in the U.S. South sometimes cannot.
“Not only do we not get the credit we should for using native trees,” he said. “In my mind, we’re held to a much higher
standard than the rest of the world — and unfairly so.”
Diversity as Risk Management
Asked what landowners should prioritize even in a down market, Thomas framed his advice around a principle he sees as both ecological and economic: diversity.
“A healthy forest is a diverse forest,” he said. “Anytime all your trees are the same age and the same species, your risk goes up.”
Mixed age classes reduce exposure to wind damage from hurricanes and tornadoes. Mixed species guard against
disease outbreaks like the loblolly pine decline that hit southwest Georgia. And the combination of thinning and prescribed fire creates understory conditions that support wildlife and recreational value. Even in tough markets, Thomas encouraged landowners to keep harvesting portions of their mature timber and to diversify species where they can.
“Even in the face of bad markets, sometimes you’ve just got to cut timber,” he said, “so that you are managing a mix of
younger stands and older stands — which minimizes your wind risk.”
A Workforce in Waiting
Thomas also touched on a concern that may compound the industry’s challenges when the cycle turns: workforce. The
industry hasn’t been doing much hiring during the downturn, and a wave of retirements is approaching.
His particular concern is the loss of two-year technical forestry programs, like those Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College once offered, which produced trained woods workers who built careers as field technicians doing timber cruising, logging inspections and planting supervision.
“We lost something when everybody shifted to four years,” Thomas said. “We’ve still got a real need for that forestry
technician role — somebody working in the field for their whole career. We can pay them real well to do that.”
The fog, Thomas acknowledged, isn’t lifting anytime soon. But the decisions landowners and policymakers make
while it persists will shape Georgia’s forests for decades to come. ■
John Casey is a strategic communications professional who supports clients through the art of storytelling. In his downtime, John can be found hunting and fishing on his family’s centennial farm in Northwest Georgia.
For landowners on the ground — particularly the family forest owners with 2,000 acres or fewer who make up the
backbone of Georgia’s private forestland — the uncertainty has become deeply personal.
Thomas described a cascading set of pressures: declining markets, stubborn property taxes and the fundamental question of whether to replant at all.
In southwest Georgia, he said, farmers who interplant timber among their irrigation circles have begun walking away
from trees entirely, a trend that accelerated after Hurricane Michael sent $35-per-ton saw timber crashing to a
dollar or two.
“A lot of them are saying, ‘I’m not going to replant the trees. I’d rather do some dryland ag because I can’t count on the
markets to be there,’” Thomas said.
He described what he called “small landowner economics” — the near-term math that drives most family forest decisions.
After federal and state taxes, cost of sale and decades of property tax payments, the ask to then reinvest hundreds
of dollars per acre in replanting can feel steep.
“They start to look at it and say, ‘I grew that stand to make money and now I’m winding up with less than half of what I
sold it for in my pocket,’” he said.
Georgia’s property tax structure compounds the challenge. Unlike most southern states that tax timberland
based on productive capacity, Georgia’s Conservation Use Valuation Assessment is tied to fair-market land values — which have continued climbing even as timber revenues fall.
Large landowners, Thomas said, will continue harvesting — perhaps at reduced volumes. Small landowners tend to simply stop cutting and wait. And when they do replant, he says lower densities are the hedge, noting that advances in genetics have made southern pines grow so fast that even low-density plantations reach crown closure by seven or eight years.
A Market-Driven Landscape
Thomas sees the ecological stakes as inseparable from the economic ones. The landscape of the U.S. South, he argued, is fundamentally market-driven — and over long cycles, what grows on the land will reflect what the land can earn.
“If we don’t have a market for trees, slowly but surely our retention rate of forest is going to decline,” he said. “People
will plant grass and put cows on it. They might plant fruiting trees or row crops. Other uses will arrive.”
What makes the South distinctive, Thomas argued, is that its commercial forests use native species. When landowners
grow loblolly, slash or longleaf pine and manage those stands with thinning and prescribed fire, they recreate
ecological conditions remarkably close to the pre-European landscape.
“If we could lengthen rotation length in the South to 50 years, reintroduce fire and thin it, when you drove through the
South, you would be driving through a landscape similar to that encountered when the Europeans got here,” he said.
“And we can do that while producing trees.”
He contrasted that with Brazil, where native cerrado ecosystems and grasslands are being cleared for dense, short-rotation non-native eucalyptus monocultures. Thomas noted the irony that such conversions can qualify for FSC
certification, while clearcut-and-replant operations using native species in the U.S. South sometimes cannot.
“Not only do we not get the credit we should for using native trees,” he said. “In my mind, we’re held to a much higher
standard than the rest of the world — and unfairly so.”
Diversity as Risk Management
Asked what landowners should prioritize even in a down market, Thomas framed his advice around a principle he sees as both ecological and economic: diversity.
“A healthy forest is a diverse forest,” he said. “Anytime all your trees are the same age and the same species, your risk goes up.”
Mixed age classes reduce exposure to wind damage from hurricanes and tornadoes. Mixed species guard against
disease outbreaks like the loblolly pine decline that hit southwest Georgia. And the combination of thinning and prescribed fire creates understory conditions that support wildlife and recreational value. Even in tough markets, Thomas encouraged landowners to keep harvesting portions of their mature timber and to diversify species where they can.
“Even in the face of bad markets, sometimes you’ve just got to cut timber,” he said, “so that you are managing a mix of
younger stands and older stands — which minimizes your wind risk.”
A Workforce in Waiting
Thomas also touched on a concern that may compound the industry’s challenges when the cycle turns: workforce. The
industry hasn’t been doing much hiring during the downturn, and a wave of retirements is approaching.
His particular concern is the loss of two-year technical forestry programs, like those Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College once offered, which produced trained woods workers who built careers as field technicians doing timber cruising, logging inspections and planting supervision.
“We lost something when everybody shifted to four years,” Thomas said. “We’ve still got a real need for that forestry
technician role — somebody working in the field for their whole career. We can pay them real well to do that.”
The fog, Thomas acknowledged, isn’t lifting anytime soon. But the decisions landowners and policymakers make
while it persists will shape Georgia’s forests for decades to come. ■
John Casey is a strategic communications professional who supports clients through the art of storytelling. In his downtime, John can be found hunting and fishing on his family’s centennial farm in Northwest Georgia.
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Georgia Forestry Magazine is published by HL Strategy, an integrated marketing and communications firm focused on our nation's biggest challenges and opportunities. Learn more at hlstrategy.com
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