By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
In a place like northern Maine, where the average daily commute seemingly has the same likelihood of encountering a station wagon as a logging truck, folks understand the importance of Maine’s forest economy.
There are some things however that northern Mainers may not know about the industry, and Maine Forest Products Council Executive Director Patrick Strauch recently visited the region to share some pretty significant information – like how one out of every $16 in Maine’s gross state product and one out of every 20 jobs is associated with the forest products sector, and that forestry has a total economic impact of $8 billion in the state.
“[The forest products industry] is a solid industry that’s gotten through a very tough period, and as long as we’re innovative and invest capital, those jobs are going to be there,” Strauch said on Friday and the Northern Maine Development Comission building in Caribou, hosted by officials with the Aroostook Partnership for Progress.
Explaining the viability of Maine’s forest economy, Strauch also expressed that community perception of the forest products sector may not accurately reflect its thriving bottom line due to how the “third industrial revolution” is impacting the industry as a whole.
For example, in a recent publication by the Maine Forest Products Council, based out of Augusta, statistics showed that fewer jobs are required by the paper industry as productivity of each worker has increased with technology. Citing data from the Maine Pulp and Paper Association, the numbers from 1980 placed the 18,076 paper industry workers at producing an average 177 tons of product each, for a statewide total of 3.2 million tons. In 2011, there were 6,798 workers yielding 485 tons per worker each year for a total of 3.3 million statewide.
“People living in these communities see fewer jobs, and they equate that with a declining industry,” Strauch said. “People have to understand what’s going on around them in order to really buy into creating a vision for the future, and this is the first step. It’s saying jobs have declined, but safety and productivity have improved — and that’s one of our core messages.”
While the forest products sector makes up a sizeable piece of Maine’s economic pie, numbers from the Maine Department of Labor show that 62 percent of workers in the industry are 45 years old or older, and officials with the Maine Forest Products council are looking into ways raising awareness about the job opportunities.
Currently, Strauch says that kids with an aptitude for handling large equipment, being outdoors or with interest in manufacturing aren’t being directed toward the forest products industry because of the perception that there aren’t opportunities — when that’s not the case.
“Manufacturing in Maine is changing; it’s going to have a very high tech component to it and so you’re going to need people who understand the higher tech components of operating equipment even in the woods,” he said, citing the example that the industry is moving away from skidders that cost $75,000 to harvesting equipment that costs $500,000. “You’re going to need workers who know how to operate [the newer equipment], that won’t damage it, that understand hydraulics as well as electronics, and who understand environmental stewardship because the logger of today has to make choices about protecting streams and water quality — and not making mud and ruts. And all that can be done with the right kind of training.”
That “right kind of training” doesn’t necessarily mean reinventing the wheel, as some facets of the industry already have productive partnerships with educational institutions; Strauch said that Irving collaborates with Northern Maine Community College to help students learn the necessary skills modern loggers need, and the same thing needs to happen in the sawmill industry and in paper manufacturing.
“We’ve got some great things going on in different parts of the state; we’re reaching out to all the vocational education places to kind of straighten out the record regarding what the opportunities are,” Strauch said. “I think that’s our challenge in manufacturing and woodswork, to get our programs together that train people and then we also need to figure out how to mentor them on the worksite,” he added. “You can train people and they can run simulators and understand the new equipment, but they’ve got to have a mentoring component that gets folks into the seat and understand how to work in the environment they’re in.”
A digital copy of the report can be found by visiting www.maineforest.org.
