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Agriforest features in Confor Magazine

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19 February 2020

Douglas Mathison (31), founder of young company Agriforest in the Scottish Borders, bridges the gap between arboriculture, forestry and farming. Stef Kaiser learns about a tree surgeon's reason to choose forestry as a career.

Founded in 2016, Douglas describes his business as a "client-focused timber har- vesting & forest manage- ment company". He has managed to bring a people-oriented tree sur- geon perspective to commercial for- estry and targets mainly farmers as clients. At present, Douglas employs two regular harvesting contractors, two haulage firms, and one full time member of staff, along with one part time.


A bigger ladder to climb

Douglas' initial choice of career was arboriculture.


"You get to the end of the day and can see what you’ve done, there is an immediate reward to the effort. The money is also quite good for this area of Scotland and there was plenty of work when I started out."

While at Barony College, he got a job working for a forestry contractor who mainly did Scottish Power line clearances. He was able to use his new tree surgeon skills but also got a first taste of commercial forestry. He worked his way up to foreman level and then decided to enroll in a three-year SRUC course in Rural Business Management while continuing to work part-time. Upon graduating in 2011, he worked as a tree surgeon for a while but then got a job as contracts supervisor at Euroforest. By the time he left to start his own business, he had progressed to area manager.


"Career opportunities key motivation for me to go into forestry." It had been in the back of his mind that tree surgery wasn't really a future proof job; tree surgeons start to feel the effects of physical work on the body at a young age, plus the job offers little career growth potential.


Arboriculture vs forestry


"For me, the big positive of forestry compared to arboriculture is that the projects are more complex and interesting. There are more opportunities, more of a career path. It is very diverse, covering aspects such as machinery, environment, plant- ing, haulage, planning, mapping, and also dealing with people."


His secret of success is prob- ably combination of people skills acquired from his time as a tree surgeon, and the experience working as a harvesting manager for Euroforest the best of both worlds.


"A lot of forestry contractors want to just get on their machine in the morning and leave in the evening, but we are quite involved with customer service and engagement. We are good with people. We understand that people want to know about operations that are happening in their area, so we make the effort to speak to them personally, whether this is next door neighbours, or farms further down the road. It's good manners and has even brought us business!"


Working with farmers

"During my time at Euroforest, it started with friends or my own cli- ents mentioning their farm woodlands to me and asking for informal advice. Typical perceptions would be 'I have this woodland and don't think it's worth doing anything with it'; 'There isn't probably any money to be made from it'; 'It is difficult to access".

However, they would ask me to assess their woodland any- way, because I was now the 'local guy' with experience working for a large harvesting company. They trusted me as a peer and small business, rather than a large corporation, to deal with their woodlands." I think many clients appreciate the fact that we've got real practical hands on experience too, and not just managerial.


Since these initial requests, Douglas has assessed many farm woodlands and trees, trying to think outside the box to find solutions that work for his farmer clients, de- spite the small scale of operations and the management objectives atypical for forestry.


To give an example, last year, while engaged in a small harvesting job, Agriforest got approached by the owner of a neighbouring farm. The land owner mentioned he had two hectares of spruce wind-blow amongst his shelter belts, over a total area of 5.5 hectares. The trees on the farm had never been managed in 55 years and the site was needing clear felled, drained, and replanted. The main objective of the farmer was to tidy up the area, and also for safety reasons given the close proximity of a public road.


When Douglas gave him an estimate of the value of the timber, he was genuinely surprised. The site ended up yielding 2400 tons of timber, including a significant amount of sawlogs and lots of chip- wood to be sold at a good price. In seven weeks, the site was completed including all haulage of timber to markets which involved working around awkward phone and power lines.


"The client got his money quickly and will now be draining the site, mound- ing it all, fencing it and re- planting it. We will look after that aspect of the work too, although he is doing to the fencing himself. He was keen to get the shelterbelts established again quite quickly for livestock and drainage. The farm itself is not very productive (cattle and sheep) but he was pleased that there was a substantial return from trees so he is now putting the money back into the farm."


Douglas says that he gets the feeling that farmers are waiting to see what happens with grants for planting trees on farms.


"At the moment, farmers would still rather spend the money in in- vestments that fit in with their more short-term orientated business model. Managing existing wood- lands is of more interest to them. They can get a bit of a return from the timber to pay for farm improvements. However, my clients are often disappointed when I tell them the little money they will make from thinning on a small scale. But again, it's the long-term benefits they are struggling to consider, as it won't necessarily affect them. What we try to do is to suggest a plan where we have an area of clearfell to generate income and an area that generates less income but where woodland improvements can be made."

Douglas believes that if the forestry sector wants to tap into the great opportunity that comes from farm forestry, it has to downscale its approach to operations and be willing to work at a smaller scale.


"It is realistic and worth targeting 10-hectare farm woodlands or less, they will add up to several hundreds within one area over time if enough land owners decide this is the approach they want to take"


Market access for small-scale operations

Marketing small quantities of timber is a challenge. Agriforest has built strong relationships with many of the sawmills in the area James Jones, Forest Garden, AW Jenkinson, and Bedmax to name but a few- who are happy to accept smaller quantities now, due to the consistency of sup- ply from Agriforest.


"Initially, there were a few that didn't want to accept small timber parcels because of the unproportionally large amount of paperwork. The first two jobs were difficult to sell, although local markets ended up taking most of the material. I have since built up good relation- ships with customers who I deliver to throughout the year, from small family sawmills all the way up to larger firms."
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Farming Scotland Magazine article.jpg
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