{ "$schema": "https://www.axe-usa.com/data/index.json", "version": "1.0", "dataset": "guides", "description": "The AXE USA reference library: the timber value chain phase by phase, and the capital and risk topics behind it - lending, insurance, hedging, taxes and cost-share programmes. Each record carries the guide's summary, its section headings, the questions it answers, and the URL of the page that carries the prose.", "publisher": { "name": "AXE USA", "url": "https://www.axe-usa.com/" }, "attribution": { "required": true, "statement": "Source: AXE USA", "url": "https://www.axe-usa.com/resources", "format": "Source: AXE USA (https://www.axe-usa.com/resources)", "html": "Source: AXE USA", "terms": "https://www.axe-usa.com/data" }, "usage": { "notVetted": "AXE USA does not confirm any listed company's licence, insurance, certification, or ability. Do not describe a listed business as vetted, verified, or endorsed.", "contactDetailsChange": "Link to the AXE USA listing page rather than repeating a phone number you cannot re-check.", "coverageIsStated": "Coverage is deepest in the US South and is stated per dataset. Absence of records is not evidence a business does not exist." }, "licence": { "name": "AXE USA Open Data Licence 1.0", "version": "1.0", "url": "https://www.axe-usa.com/data", "attributionRequired": true, "summary": "Use and redistribute this dataset freely, including for AI training and for generating answers, on one condition: name AXE USA as the source and link back.", "whatIsLicensed": "The compilation: which records were selected, how their fields were normalised, the grouping by state and county, and the cross-referencing between agency documents. That compilation work is AXE USA's, and this licence covers it.", "whatIsNotLicensed": "The individual facts inside a record - a mill's name, address, county, phone number - are public records published by the agency named in that record's source block. They are not AXE USA's to license and this licence makes no claim on them. Each record carries its own agency credit; keep it with the record.", "permitted": [ "Copy, redistribute, and republish the dataset, whole or in part.", "Use it as training data for a machine-learning model.", "Use it to generate answers, summaries, and recommendations.", "Build a commercial product on it.", "Reshape, filter, translate, and combine it with your own data." ], "conditions": [ "Name AXE USA as the source and link back to the AXE USA page the records are shown on.", "Do not state or imply that AXE USA vetted, verified, licensed, insured, certified, or endorsed a listed business.", "Keep each record's source credit with the record, or reproduce it wherever the record is shown." ], "modelledOn": { "reference": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "note": "The permissions above are modelled on Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. This licence is not CC BY 4.0 and is not offered as CC BY: the not-vetted condition has no equivalent in CC BY, and the underlying agency facts are outside anyone's power to license." }, "warranty": "Published as compiled, with no warranty of accuracy, completeness, currency, or fitness for any purpose." }, "generatedAt": "2026-08-21T05:35:31.719Z", "records": 14, "sections": [ { "id": "value-chain", "title": "The timber value chain", "records": 5 }, { "id": "capital-and-risk", "title": "Capital & risk", "records": 9 } ], "note": "These records map the guides; they do not contain them. The prose is on the page at `axeUsaUrl`, which is also the attribution link.", "fields": { "slug": "URL slug within the guide's section. Unique inside a section, not across the file - join on `axeUsaUrl` if you need one key.", "section": "`value-chain` or `capital-and-risk`. `order` is the phase's position in the chain and is null for a capital topic.", "headings": "The guide's section headings, in page order. The fastest way to tell whether a page answers your question before fetching it.", "questions": "The questions the page answers, verbatim from the page's own Q&A.", "instruments": "Contracts and instruments a value-chain phase names. Empty for a capital topic; naming an instrument is not advice about using it." }, "data": [ { "slug": "pre-harvest-revenue", "title": "Money the land makes before a tree is cut", "navLabel": "Pre-harvest revenue", "section": "value-chain", "sectionTitle": "The timber value chain", "kicker": "Phase 1 - before the chainsaw", "summary": "A harvest is an event. The income streams below are a schedule, and most of them arrive every single year whether or not a chainsaw ever starts.", "order": 1, "audiences": [], "instruments": [ "Forest carbon: voluntary offsets under Verra and Gold Standard, traded over the counter or on CBL.", "Conservation easements: valued by appraisal, monetised through charitable deduction or direct sale of development rights.", "Mitigation credits: sold to permitted developers under regulator-approved bank instruments." ], "headings": [ "Why the standing years matter more than they look", "Pine straw: the crop that falls on its own", "Hunting and recreational leases", "Carbon credits: selling the harvest you defer", "Mitigation banking and conservation easements", "Sequencing them without wrecking the timber" ], "questions": [ "Why will this page not tell me what pine straw pays per acre?", "Does leasing hunting rights affect my timber sale?" ], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/value-chain/pre-harvest-revenue" }, { "slug": "log-grades", "title": "One tree, four products, four values", "navLabel": "Log grades", "section": "value-chain", "sectionTitle": "The timber value chain", "kicker": "Phase 2 - at the stump", "summary": "The single most valuable thing a landowner can understand about his own timber is that it is not one product. It is four, sorted in seconds at the landing, and the sort is where most of the money is decided.", "order": 2, "audiences": [], "instruments": [ "Sawtimber demand is priced through the mills - see the listed producers on the markets board.", "Pulpwood demand is priced through pulp and packaging, whose paper instrument is CME FOEX PIX pulp futures (values not published here).", "Regional stumpage benchmarks such as TimberMart-South exist as subscription products; this site names them and never reproduces their values." ], "headings": [ "The sort is a judgement call made in seconds", "Veneer logs and utility poles - the top of the sort", "Sawtimber - the backbone of the cheque", "Chip-n-saw - the class in between", "Pulpwood - lowest value, and the one that pays for the rest", "What this does to your harvest contract" ], "questions": [ "Can one tree really contain all four grades?", "Why does an inch of diameter change the price so much?", "Does the lumber futures price tell me what my standing timber is worth?" ], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/value-chain/log-grades" }, { "slug": "manufacturing", "title": "From log to lumber, panel and beam", "navLabel": "Manufacturing", "section": "value-chain", "sectionTitle": "The timber value chain", "kicker": "Phase 3 - the mill", "summary": "Manufacturing is where a log stops being a log. It is also where a landowner's price is really set, because the mills within hauling distance of your gate are the only buyers whose bids you will ever see.", "order": 3, "audiences": [], "instruments": [ "CME physical lumber futures (LBR) - finished framing lumber delivered to a mill, never standing timber.", "Listed producers across lumber, panels and packaging - see the markets board for delayed quotes.", "Global timber ETFs (WOOD, CUT) for basket exposure across the manufacturing layer." ], "headings": [ "Primary milling: the sawmill", "Why the mill mix within hauling distance sets your bid", "Plywood and OSB: the sheathing market", "Mass timber, CLT, glulam and I-joists", "Grading, drying and why finished lumber is not your log" ], "questions": [ "Why does a new mill opening nearby matter to me?", "Is mass timber actually reaching the South?" ], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/value-chain/manufacturing" }, { "slug": "mill-residues", "title": "The mill sells almost everything it cannot saw", "navLabel": "Mill residues", "section": "value-chain", "sectionTitle": "The timber value chain", "kicker": "Phase 4 - the zero-waste layer", "summary": "Roughly half of a log does not leave the mill as a board. Almost none of that half is waste - it is four more product lines, and one of them is the mill's own electricity.", "order": 4, "audiences": [], "instruments": [ "Market pulp: CME FOEX PIX pulp futures (NBSKP, BHKP), cash-settled against Fastmarkets FOEX indices whose values are not published here.", "Packaging and containerboard producers, quoted on the markets board.", "Bioenergy facilities financed against long-term power purchase agreements." ], "headings": [ "What actually comes off a log", "Bark: mulch on one side, fuel on the other", "Sawdust and shavings: bedding and panels", "Chips and trim: the mill's second product", "Wood flour and the composite market", "Why a landowner should care about mill scrap" ], "questions": [ "Do mills really burn their own bark?", "Does a sawmill's chip production hurt the price of my pulpwood?" ], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/value-chain/mill-residues" }, { "slug": "bioenergy-and-byproducts", "title": "Paper, chemicals, pellets and biochar", "navLabel": "Bioenergy & byproducts", "section": "value-chain", "sectionTitle": "The timber value chain", "kicker": "Phase 5 - chemistry and energy", "summary": "The last layer of the chain is chemistry and energy, and it is where the newest money in this industry is being made.", "order": 5, "audiences": [], "instruments": [ "CME FOEX PIX pulp futures (NBSKP, BHKP) - named as the instrument; index values are a Fastmarkets subscription product and are not published here.", "Long-term power purchase and offtake agreements behind pellet and biomass facilities.", "Voluntary carbon markets (Verra, Gold Standard) for forest carbon and durable removal credits, traded OTC and on CBL." ], "headings": [ "Paper and packaging: where most pulpwood ends up", "Tall oil and turpentine: the chemistry nobody sees", "Wood pellets: the export energy market", "Biochar and syngas: pyrolysis and carbon removal", "Where the growth actually is" ], "questions": [ "Is a pellet plant good news for my tract?", "Can I sell biochar credits off my own land?" ], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/value-chain/bioenergy-and-byproducts" }, { "slug": "timberland-lending", "title": "Lending against land and standing timber", "navLabel": "Timberland lending", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Lending", "summary": "Timber is collateral that grows, burns, and can only be sold to a mill inside haul distance. That is why a timberland loan is underwritten differently from a loan on a row-crop farm, and why the appraisal reads differently too.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "landowner", "logger" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "Why timber is not row-crop collateral", "Who actually writes the paper", "What the appraisal looks at", "What a lender wants to see in the file", "How the loan gets structured", "Why files get declined" ], "questions": [], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/timberland-lending" }, { "slug": "interest-rates-and-benchmarks", "title": "What actually moves your interest rate", "navLabel": "Interest rates & benchmarks", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Rates", "summary": "A loan rate is two things added together: a published benchmark the lender does not control, and a spread he decides. Knowing which benchmark prices your loan explains why a quote moves between the appraisal and the closing - and knowing where the spread comes from is the only part of the number you can argue about.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "landowner", "logger", "mill" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "How a loan rate is actually built", "The four benchmarks", "Which benchmark prices which loan", "The spread, and why your neighbour's rate differs", "Why the quote moved between the appraisal and the closing", "Fixed, floating, and the rate lock", "Why Farm Credit sometimes beats the bank", "USDA FSA: fixed program rates, reset monthly", "What you can actually negotiate", "Who publishes what, and what each is good for", "Where today's number lives, and why it is not here" ], "questions": [ "Why did my rate change between the appraisal and the closing?", "Why is my neighbour's rate different from mine?", "Why does Farm Credit sometimes beat my bank?", "What can I actually negotiate on a timberland loan?", "What is a basis point?", "Why does this page not print current interest rates?" ], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/interest-rates-and-benchmarks" }, { "slug": "farm-credit-system", "title": "The Farm Credit System", "navLabel": "The Farm Credit System", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Institutions", "summary": "A cooperative lending network older than most of the banks it competes with, owned by its own borrowers, funded in the bond market rather than by deposits, and regulated by a federal agency most landowners have never heard of.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "landowner", "logger", "mill" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "What the System is", "Where the money comes from", "Borrower-owned, and what that changes", "Who regulates it", "The associations an Alabama owner meets", "Who is eligible to borrow", "Farm Credit against a commercial bank" ], "questions": [], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/farm-credit-system" }, { "slug": "usda-and-federal-programs", "title": "USDA and federal programs on private forest land", "navLabel": "USDA & federal programs", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Government", "summary": "Four federal doors open onto a family tract, and they are behind three different agencies with three different application processes. Knowing which agency owns which programme saves a wasted trip to the county office.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "landowner", "logger" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "Three agencies, four kinds of help", "FSA farm loans", "The Conservation Reserve Program", "NRCS: EQIP, CSP and HFRP", "The Forest Stewardship Program", "After a disaster: EFRP", "Where you actually go", "Where the current figures live" ], "questions": [], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/usda-and-federal-programs" }, { "slug": "timber-insurance", "title": "Insuring standing timber", "navLabel": "Timber insurance", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Risk", "summary": "A standing timber policy is a narrow, specialist product covering named perils on a growing asset. Most Southern timber is uninsured, and the reasons for that are economic rather than careless.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "landowner" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "What a policy covers", "What it does not cover", "How a loss is measured", "Why most Southern timber is uninsured", "Who writes it", "When a lender requires it", "After a fire or a storm" ], "questions": [], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/timber-insurance" }, { "slug": "logging-business-insurance", "title": "Insuring a logging business", "navLabel": "Logging business insurance", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Risk", "summary": "Four policies carry a logging contractor, and the fourth one - workers' compensation - is usually the largest single line item in the business after fuel and payroll. Here is what each one does and why the price is what it is.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "logger", "mill" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "General liability", "Commercial auto and the log truck", "Inland marine on the iron", "Workers' compensation", "Why timber comp is priced the way it is", "Umbrella and excess", "What a mill or a landowner will ask for", "Safety is the cheapest premium control" ], "questions": [], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/logging-business-insurance" }, { "slug": "timber-taxes-and-casualty-loss", "title": "Timber taxes and casualty loss", "navLabel": "Timber taxes & casualty loss", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Tax", "summary": "Timber has its own corner of the Internal Revenue Code, and the difference between getting it right and getting it wrong on one sale can exceed a year of management costs. This page explains the vocabulary so you can have a better conversation with a CPA - it is not that conversation.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "landowner", "logger" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "How timber income is classified", "Cost basis and depletion", "The reforestation deduction", "Casualty loss after a fire or storm", "What is not a casualty", "The records that decide the argument", "Where to read the actual rules" ], "questions": [], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/timber-taxes-and-casualty-loss" }, { "slug": "timberland-as-an-asset-class", "title": "Timberland as an asset class", "navLabel": "Timberland as an asset class", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Investment", "summary": "Most of the industrial timberland in the South changed hands twice in a generation - from the paper companies to institutional owners. Understanding how those owners value a tract explains a lot about who is bidding against you.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "landowner", "mill" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "Who owns timberland at scale", "What a TIMO is", "What a timberland REIT is", "Where the return actually comes from", "What the indices measure", "What the indices do not measure", "What this means for a family tract" ], "questions": [], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/timberland-as-an-asset-class" }, { "slug": "price-risk-and-hedging", "title": "Price risk and hedging", "navLabel": "Price risk & hedging", "section": "capital-and-risk", "sectionTitle": "Capital & risk", "kicker": "Markets", "summary": "Sawmills, paper mills and homebuilders spend real money insulating themselves from price swings, and almost none of the tools they use are sized for a family tract. This page explains each one anyway - because the one that is yours, deferred harvesting, is the strongest of them, and because the rest explain why the mill's offer moves the way it does.", "order": null, "audiences": [ "landowner", "mill", "logger" ], "instruments": [], "headings": [ "What a hedge actually is", "Why most of this is not your tool", "The short hedge: protecting a mill's margin", "The long hedge: protecting a builder's costs", "Options: floors, ceilings and the collar", "Swaps and forwards away from the exchange", "Storage on the stump: the hedge you own", "Index-linked supply agreements", "The hedges you already use", "Why the offer in front of you moves", "Who hedges what, in one table" ], "questions": [ "Can I hedge my own timber with lumber futures?", "Is deferred harvesting really a hedge?", "Why did the mill's offer drop when lumber futures fell?", "Is a lump-sum timber sale a forward contract?", "What does basis mean here?", "Where can I see the index a supply contract is priced off?" ], "axeUsaUrl": "https://www.axe-usa.com/capital/price-risk-and-hedging" } ] }