Worldwide forest diagnosis is conclusive: by the year 2010 there will be timber shortage.

The increasing demand of timber obliges to give an answer through a vigorous forest policy, development of new technologies, improvements of the more efficient forest species, profit from the best forest places and very specially, a large investment capacity.

The figures offered by the present worldwide reality are eloquent. In the last 50 years, the world consumption of goods ( accompanying the claim for a better life quality from the people) triplicated, exceeding, at present, 4 billion cubic meters. The average per capita/year consumption in the USA is 3.2 cubic meters, the world average is 0.73 cubic meters per inhabitant a year, and the trend is increasing.

At the same time, this search for a better life quality and more comfort implies, paradoxically, an increase in the emission of carbon dioxide; one of the reasons causing earth overheating due to the very well known greenhouse effect. This commits the nations and peoples to generate patterns to fix carbon dioxide and nothing better than encouraging the plantation of large areas of forest grown masses and the sustainable management of native forest to meet this objective.

In both cases, modern forest techniques, high-efficiency selected progenies, the adequate use of resources, places and species, day by day will render better solutions and better performance. The diagnosis allows to forecast the need of increasing the forested surface around the world by more than 100 hectare a year.

World trade of forest products has always been huge and many people are amazed to know that the invoicing of forest products around the world is higher than the addition of the global commerce of agriculture and livestock products together.

To have an idea of how huge it is, it is enough to mention that forest invoicing is already exceeding 110 billion dollars a year, a total in which Argentina only has a timid 0.2% share.

This reality talks about the significance we have to assign to this sector, if, as a country, as a province or simply as investor or entrepreneur we intend to participate at the first class productive level and wealth generator. Many countries have understood this, and, as an example, nothing better than having a look at our neighbour. In the last thirty years, the Republic of Chile has performed a forest activity parallel to copper and fruit growing and horticulture as far as export products is concerned, and this has settled the foundations of the healthy economy Chile can show today; with the added benefit that forestry is a sustainable renewable resource whereas mining is not so.

In Argentina, we are waking up, I should say, but, how many years we have lost!. Sometimes, I meditate that "the cow did not let us see the forest".

Today, precisely in the middle of a crisis of the agriculture and livestock values, and facing a panorama not clear at all for these activities and some sectors of fruit-growing and horticulture ( China's possible access to the competition market), it can be noticed that the forest products are managed like other parameters, prices have been kept steady and in some cases they have been raised and much margin is left for them to become more efficient, economical and competitive.

Large forest masses - especially cultivated forests, for their high efficiency- constitute one of the choices for carbon sequestration, that may mitigate global overheating. Kyoto Protocol and its mechanisms of mitigation constitute a significant opportunity to increase profitability of forestries, due to the compensations the issuing countries are ready to pay, for tons of carbon sequestered from the atmosphere. Many agreements are being subscribed ( between 8 and 25 U$S per metric ton of sequestered carbon), some of them in our country. I would like to remind that a ton of carbon fixed by the forests in their timber, means the capture of some 3.76 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

To have an idea of the importance of this market: its global estimation is about 8 billion dollars annually and undoubtedly, our forestries may participate in this market to render services and, nobody ignores that, this will improve the sector profitability and will assure a permanent income.

Ing. Aldo Rudi- Forest Director of Rama