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CAPITAL IDEAS -- LIVE!
OCTOBER 2008
News Conference for Forest Owners
Sponsored by the Alabama Forest Owners' Association, Inc.
This Conference was recorded on OCTOBER 15, 2008.
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Hayes D. Brown
starting time: (00:00) |
Moderator
Hayes D. Brown, attorney and forest owner, will moderate this news
conference. Hayes' email address is
hbrown@hayesbrown.com.
Click Here to View & Hear Prior News Conferences.
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Rosemary Elebash
(00:28)
Hear Conference |
Make a Difference:
Vote on November 4
Rosemary Elebash is the
Alabama State
Director of the National Federation of
Independent Business. She recently reminded her 12,000 members of 4
important deadlines/dates and we thought you might benefit if she told you
about them and why it's important for business owners and forest owners to
study the issues and make choices on November 4. John McCain & Barack Obama
aren't the only choices on the November ballot.
Phone: (334) 264-2261
Email: rosemary.elebash@nfib.org
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Dr. Mark Thornton
(03:31)
Hear Conference |
Sound Fiscal Policy: Personal & Public
Mark Thornton
is
Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute
headquartered in Auburn, Alabama. The Mises Institute "defends the market
economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international
relations, while opposing government intervention as economically and
socially destructive." Based on that portion of the Institute's mission
statement, we suspect Mark and his fellow libertarians have been suffering
from severe heartburn lately. Mark may not separate out forest owners for
special advice, but as investors in land and timber, there may be some
useful advice hiding between the lines in his essays and in the Mises
philosophy.
Phone: (334) 321-2100
Email: mthornton@mises.org
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Dr. Anthony C. Drake, DVM
(07:47)
Hear Conference |
Selling Carbon Offsets
Tony Drake and wife
Janie own land
in several south Alabama counties. Tony called AFOA a few weeks ago and
reported that he had sold $14,000 of carbon credits on the
Chicago Climate
Exchange and thought our members would like to know how he did it. He is
actively assisting the
Alabama Treasure Forest Association and
AgraGate (a
carbon aggregator and subsidiary of the
Iowa Farm Bureau) in
helping forest owners apply for and sell carbon credits on their land. We
asked Tony to tell us all about selling carbon, the pros and the cons, and
how to apply.
With both candidates for U.S. President claiming they
will support
Cap and Trade Legislation, a growing carbon market in the U.S. seems a
sure thing. Whether global warming exists, or whether it is being caused by
humans, is fast becoming irrelevant.
Phone: (334) 850-8412
Email: tonydrake@hughes.net
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Dr. Tom Gallagher
(12:11)
Hear Conference |
Bio Mass Harvesting Research
Tom Gallagher
is Assistant Professor, Forest Operations, at Auburn University's
School of Forestry &
Wildlife Sciences. In 2007 Tom and co-author Dana Mitchell published
a paper in the Southern Journal of Applied Forestry entitled,
Chipping
whole trees for fuel chips: a production study. Tom has acquired
several pieces of small scale harvesting equipment (see photos below) and is
studying the economics of harvesting biomass. He firmly believes that
biomass harvesting will play an important role in the forest industry of the
near future. We can see that a market for and the ability to economically
remove low quality small trees (such as pulpwood or biomass) from
crowded stands will help forest owners grow bigger higher quality trees such
as sawtimber and poles.
Small Scale Harvesting
Equipment
Phone: (334) 844-1095
Email: gallatv@auburn.edu
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Dr. Ben Hoffman
(15:17)
Hear Conference |
Adapting the Farm Tractor for Logging
Ben Hoffman "is a forester
with 28 years experience in state, federal, and private (including two years
as a private logging contractor) forestry and 17 years in academia."
Independent Sawmill and
Woodlot Management magazine recently published an article by Ben
entitled,
The Farm Tractor.
He cautions us throughout the article (with words and diagrams) to
understand the design of farm tractors and how easy it is to tip them over.
He urges tractor owners to install rollover protection and other add-ons for
woods work. Finally he advises that an old two-wheel drive with chains might
do almost as much work as a new, more expensive 4-wheel drive.
Related links:
Phone: (207) 327-1064
Email: bennmeh@maine.edu
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Dr. Tamara L. Cushing
(17:55)
Hear Conference |
$25,000 Write-off for SUV - More for Pickups
Tammy Cushing is Assistant
Professor of Forest Management and Economics at the University of Kentucky's
Department of Forestry. Last month we read in the
Progressive Farmer magazine: "Write-offs for company vehicles
are very high right now. For example, if you have a new SUV with a loaded
weight over 6,000 pounds, $25,000 of the cost can be expensed the first
year." We immediately thought, "With pickup trucks selling at big
mark-downs and the IRS offering a big write-off, maybe it's time to get that
woods truck my wife has been wanting me to buy." Write-offs for pickups
are bigger than $25,000! Dr. Cushing will explain
how much and how it's done.
Depreciation & Section 179 Election at Timber Tax Website
Phone: (859) 257-2149
Email: tamara.cushing@uky.edu
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Dr. Robert
A. Tufts
(20:48)
Hear Conference |
Old Cemeteries & Obligations
Robert Tufts is
an Attorney and Associate Professor in the
School of Forestry and
Wildlife Sciences at Auburn University. We frequently go to Robert
for legal advice and when we saw an article in
Progressive Farmer
(link updated 8/10/09)
magazine about the obligations of a landowner to an old gravesite on his
property, we called him to see if he would tell us what a landowner can and
can't do. According to the Progressive Farmer article, “Relatives of
a family member buried in a cemetery plot have the following rights: the
right of visitation, the right to decorate the grave and the right to
protect it from desecration. If the cemetery is on privately owned land,
these rights nevertheless exist for the family, and the owners of the land
have a legal obligation to provide some sort of reasonable access to the
gravesites."
Phone: (334) 844-1011
Email: tuftsra@auburn.edu
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David P. Tenny
(24:30)
Hear Conference |
What is NAFO?
Dave Tenny is President and CEO
of the brand new National
Alliance of Forest Owners (NAFO) based in Washington, DC. We asked a
forestry friend what NAFO was and she said, "It's that new organization
formed by the
TIMOs and
REITs." But when we checked NAFO's website, we noticed that
other organizations had become members, such as Forest Landowners
Association, Alabama Forestry Association, Association of Consulting
Foresters and others. NAFO's mission statement says: The National
Alliance of Forest Owners will protect and enhance the economic and
environmental values of privately-owned forests through targeted policy
advocacy at the national level. Tenny wants our national leaders
to learn of the "importance of the working forest as an essential part of
our national infrastructure." We look forward to learning more from CEO Dave
Tenny, today, and as the Alliance develops.
Phone: (202) 367-1163
Email: dtenny@nafoalliance.org
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