SIC 0831 Forest Nurseries and Gathering of Forest Products
SIC 0831
This category covers establishments primarily engaged in growing trees for purposes of reforestation or in gathering forest products. The concentration or distillation of these products, when carried on in the forest, is included in this industry. Forest products typically gathered are: balsam needles, ginseng, huckleberry greens, maple sap, moss (including Spanish and sphagnum varieties), teaberries, and tree gums and barks. The industry also includes forest nurseries; rubber plantations; gathering, extracting, and selling of tree seeds; lac production; and distillation of gums, turpentine and rosin, if carried on at the gum farm.
111998
All Other Miscellaneous Crop Farming
113210
Forest Nurseries and Gathering of Forest Products
The U.S. forest products industry (FPI) produces about $260 billion worth of goods annually according to the American Wood Preservers Institute. The industry employs approximately 1.3 million in the planting, growing, managing, and harvesting of trees and in the production of wood and paper products. The FPI ranks among the top 10 manufacturing employers in 46 of the 50 states, with an annual payroll of around $46 billion, although between 1997 and 2002, the industry shuttered 72 paper mills and trimmed 32,000 jobs. Oregon, Washington, and California are the largest timber producing states, accounting for roughly three-fourths of Western timber production in the early 2000s. Timber is also the South's largest agricultural product, employing one of every nine southern manufacturing workers.
About one-half of the United States is covered with trees. This represents about two-thirds of the presettlement forested land in the country. Two-thirds of America's forest land, or about 500 million acres, is classified as timberland, or forest capable of growing 20 cubic feet of wood per acre per year. Of this, roughly 30 percent is owned by the federal government and by state and local governments, while about 60 percent is in relatively small tracts owned by individuals, and the remainder is owned by the FPI. About 4 million tree seedlings are planted in the United States daily.
The term "forest products industry" is used to describe all industries dependent upon forest products including the lumber, wood pulp, and paper industries and those activities covered by SIC 0831. However, those activities covered by SIC 0831 are a relatively small part of total FPI activities.
Since the mid-1950s, the forest products industry shifted from a proliferation of companies operating in specialized areas toward a consolidation of operations within large, diversified conglomerates with national and international interests. Reflecting these patterns, most forest nurseries and operations involved in the gathering of forest products became affiliated with larger operations in the parent industries of SIC: 6519 Timber Tract Real Estate or SIC 2411: Logging. Furthermore, in 1986 the...
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