NEFF has created a $32-million pilot project that aims to help New England’s working forest landowners implement forest management practices on approximately 50,000 acres that support and improve long-term forest health, ecological integrity, and wood productivity. The project also works to grow economic markets for regional wood. It is funded by a USDA Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) award.
NEFF’s AMP project is organized around three broad goals and areas of work:
NEFF’s AMP project will also offer incentives and support to foresters and logging contractors.
Through this project, NEFF will work to leverage the USDA’s investment into continued expansion of improved forestry across the managed portion of the 32 million acres of forestland that spans New England, which makes this pilot project both an important first step and an opportunity to gather lessons learned — and carry them with us from the pilot to this wider landscape.
NEFF is focused on forging a stronger connection between timber producers and wood consumers in our region, which include the producers and mills that turn timber into building materials and the project developers, architects, builders, and others who drive demand for building with wood. (We’ll even be launching a significant communication and marketing effort to tell the story of New England-grown wood as it travels from the forest to its final structure.)
We are focused on wood use within the building sector, particularly for housing, and working to advance markets for producers by increasing the volume and variety of wood products used in buildings. NEFF will accomplish this through outreach to affordable housing agencies and building sector professionals — architects, engineers, contractors, etc. — at industry events and workshops. We are also working to increase the prevalence of mass timber as a structural building material by providing new guidance and educational resources, such as mass timber housing prototypes for designers and builders.
We’re confident NEFF’s forestry approaches will increase forest productivity, generate larger volumes of quality sawtimber in the long term, and reduce the risk of catastrophic loss of commercial timber supplies due to pests and disease, and as part of this project, NEFF will document and model these outcomes over time.
This project team will conduct relevant tracking and modeling work to verify that practices are conducted as planned, quantify the amount of merchantable wood produced from those practices, and model the volume and timing of future sawtimber production from lands where practices were implemented to document the full impact of these practices.
If you’re a forest landowner who’s interested in receiving incentives for qualified forest practices, please contact Daniel Hohl at [email protected] about getting involved. NEFF has conducted three rounds of an RFP processes to seek projects for the incentive program, and at this point invites additional proposals on a rolling basis.
NEFF staff has researched and defined a set of qualifying improved forestry practices for this incentive program that is consistent with USDA and NRCS requirements.
Those hoping to participate in AMP should view “Guidance for Enrollees: Subsidiary Print Sample” below and on the left. Subsidiary Prints are generated by USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) to document eligibility criteria for various USDA programs, including Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP). Each landowner must request their own Subsidiary Print from USDA FSA and provide it to New England Forestry Foundation.
Second, on June 30, NEFF hosted an informational webinar for landowners and similar stakeholders about NEFF’s work with AMP and our latest commercial landowner RFP, for those interested in submitting proposals.
