- [Narrator] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by: (bright guitar music) the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(bright guitar music) - You are watching "Montana Ag Live," coming to you today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology, happy to be your host again this evening.

We're gonna have a fun show.

We're gonna address something that we've been negligent in not addressing in the past, and that's the forest industry here in the state of Montana.

It's a big part of Montana's economy.

It has been for a lot of years.

Through the 30 years that we've done this program, we've only addressed forestry maybe three or four times at the most, so we're gonna go back and look at how important the forest industry is to our state.

So if you have questions concerning that tonight, we have an expert here that can answer those.

And with that, I'm gonna introduce this evening's panel.

Way to my left, Joel Schumacher.

Joel's an extension Ag economist here at Montana State University.

Any questions about anything economics, and I tell you what, make 'em tough, because these economists (Joel laughs) think they're really sharp.

(Joel laughs) So let's try to stump the Ag economist this evening.

Our special guest this evening came over from BBER which is a Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana, he's a forest economist, and I know we visited before the program.

You're gonna learn a lot about forestry and the value it adds to Montana's economy tonight.

Questions, the phone will be up, number will be up shortly, and then you can start calling in those questions.

Jane Mangold, first time back this fall.

Jane, welcome back.

Jane is a invasive weed scientist.

I'm not gonna call you a plant ecologist.

- That's all right.

- Okay, so for my notion, she is a weed scientist, and, of course, Abi Saeed, Abi's here most weeks to answer your horticultural questions about your lawn, your garden, your trees.

So don't be bashful.

We have phone operators tonight ready to take your calls.

Judge Bruce Loble and Cheryl Bennett.

So they're not busy yet.

The phone number needs to get up, and we'll start by asking Sam a little bit about what you do over at the University of Montana.

- Terrific.

Thanks Jack, yeah, and thanks for having me.

It's exciting to be here.

Yeah.

I'm Sam Scott.

I'm a forest economist, which is a real job title.

I didn't just make it up, (group laughs) or it's mostly not made up.

It's easier to find jobs if you make 'em yourself.

But yeah, I'm a forest economist, so I'm kind of straddled in between the worlds of forestry and economics.

I work at the Bureau of Business and Economic Research, BBER, which I know people are fairly familiar with across the state, especially in the ag world.

Within BBER, there's a lab, the Forest Industry Research Program.

There's about 12 of us.

We do a variety of different things.

One of our primary goals and what a lot of our work is based around is kind of the lofty objective of estimating the fate of, essentially, all forest-based woody biomass, woody fiber after it leaves the stump in the Western United States.

So we're looking at it from when it leaves the stump, how much leaves the woods, how much ends up at the mills, and what it's made into.

(Bruce speaking faintly) We do that work through a variety of different methods.

A lot of that is talking to over, you know, 1600 mills across the Western United States on an annual basis.

And then we also provide more support as far as researching capacity and capability of the industry across the Western US.

More direct support right here in Montana, we support the public timber appraisal programs for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, as well as Region 1 of the Forest Service, and then we also do just a variety of outreach activities as they come up, from local, regional, and national agencies.

- Sounds like you're busy.

(Jack laughs) - We got a lot going on.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd say we have more work than people, so.

- Okay.

You know, in the news, we always see about all the mill closures that have happened over the past several years here in Montana.

How many mills, actual sawmills, do we have left in this state, roughly?

- You know, absolutely, yeah, and that's a really good question, 'cause there's a couple ways to count it.

If you ask certain people in the industry, they'll tell you, we have five sawmills left in the state, and they're talking about these large sawmills that handle, you know, maybe 90% of all the wood in Montana.

We count, last I saw, 69 wood products facilities in the state of Montana, but we use a broader definition than a lot of people.

But as far as big sawmills that you picture driving by with the big decks of logs and hundreds of employees, I'd say there's five left.

- Okay.

We'll get back to that, and get back to you.

We have several Facebook questions that have come in, and email questions, and folks, if you do wanna ask questions, you can do it via Facebook and/or email, and it'll get to me either (Cheryl speaking faintly) over this little computer, or somebody will hand them to me.

But before we go any farther, our first caller this evening (Cheryl speaking faintly) asked when they should start deep watering trees.

Abi, you want to touch on that one?

- Yeah, so this time of year, usually end of September, starting beginning of October is a really good time to give a good soaking (Cheryl speaking faintly) to the root system of your trees and shrubs.

This is especially important for our evergreen trees and shrubs because they're not, unlike our deciduous trees that are gonna drop their leaves, so they're not losing as much moisture over the winter.

Our evergreens are gonna continue to lose that moisture in the winter.

So if they have been stressed at all, if you're noticing any sort of drought stress in the trees, make sure that they're continuing to be and then giving that nice deep soak before the ground freezes can help them get through that winter.

- Is that right at the base of the tree, or do you wanna do it around the drip line?

- Great question.

Yeah, you wanna do it around the drip line.

So drip line is, if you just imagine the tree like an umbrella, it's where that water would drop down, that area around the root system and just beyond that is where the most of the active roots are located, and that's where they're gonna be absorbing most of that moisture.

So make sure to do that, and then if we have a really dry winter, you can often help your evergreens by giving them maybe water once a month.

If there's no snow cover and temperatures are above 40 degrees, (Cheryl speaking faintly) you may also consider winter watering.

- Okay.

- May I ask a follow up, Abi?

- Mm-hmm.

- What about, where does fertilizing fit in for a tree?

(Bruce speaking faintly) - That's a- - Especially maybe, like, a younger tree that you're just getting going?

- Yeah.

Yeah, that's a really good question.

So I'm more of a fan of spring fertilizing for trees.

(Bruce and Cheryl speaking faintly) You can apply fertilizer early in the spring, and then as soon as it starts to produce that new growth, it gives it that little bit of energy.

A few things to keep in mind though, if the tree is stressed at all, I don't recommend fertilizing, and that's because instead of trying to focus on surviving and root building, it might just start to push that new growth into creating more leaves, creating more vegetation in general.

And so if you have a stressed tree, just focus on taking care of it the best that you can, let it get settled in, and then you can start with, slow-release fertilizers work the best- - And thanks so much for your call.

- For trees and shrubs.

Mm-hmm.

- I have to throw my two cents in on this.

(Jane laughs) And I go back a long time in this state, and in 1983, (Bruce speaking faintly) our first frost was on the 15th of September.

It was also 15 degrees.

Any trees that had been well-watered and fertilized did not make it, if they were 10 years old or younger.

Trees that were neglected and sitting in weed patches survive natural.

So you stress 'em.

- Mm-hmm.

- And although our climate's changed a little bit, you might be able to get away with it now, but I'm not a big fan of fertilizing trees.

Sam, we got a question that came in via Facebook here, and also another one that was called in from Missoula.

They wanna know why sawmills are shutting down in the state.

- Oh, well that is a terrific question, Jack.

And it's one we (laughs) talk about a lot.

It's kind of the big story in Montana right now.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) And there's kind of two ways, or two different timeframes we need to understand to get that.

And kind of, in the longest frame, or we'll call it kind of 30 to 40 years, there's been consistent pressure on the industry of reducing timber harvest in the state.

And if we think about our ability to process trees and our timber harvest, it's kind of on a balance.

If we pull blocks off one side, the other side's gonna go up, right?

So if we reduce timber harvest, then this side's gonna get lighter, and now all of a sudden our timber harvest is up here, and we're gonna have to take a block out of our capacity to bring it back there, and that block pulling out is typically a sawmill closing.

So for the past 40 years, that's been the story.

More recently though, especially in the past two years, our more direct problems have been related to labor and housing, especially in the communities that have our sawmills.

Seeley Lake, Pyramid Mountain Lumber shut down last year in Seeley Lake.

I would've said six large sawmills to that question before that, (Cheryl speaking faintly) but Pyramid shut down last year.

And the primary reason the mill gave for their shutdown is their inability to maintain, and especially to bring in new workers, because people can't afford to live in Seeley Lake.

Or Bozeman or Missoula.

- Or Bozeman or Missoula, or of these other mill towns.

And from kind of a broader economic perspective, there's also kind of an inflationary squeeze going on, where kind of the commodity lumber price, the national lumber price right now for framing lumber is about 400 bucks/1,000.

In, we'll call it 2001, any guesses?

- About the same?

- Half.

- It was about 400 bucks/1,000 in 2001 too.

- Yeah.

- Oh, wow.

- Believe it or not, fuel is more expensive, labor is more expensive, (Cheryl speaking faintly) everything else is also more expensive.

So mills are kind of in this pinch where they're not getting any more for their product, but they're having to pay a whole lot more for everything else.

During the pandemic that was temporarily covered by record high lumber prices, up to 1,200, $1,300/1,000.

But now that those record high lumber prices are gone, they're left with those high costs and it's put 'em in a really tight spot.

- We have a couple other questions that have come in based on the cost.

I'll get to those in a moment.

But we had a caller last week, and a Facebook question this week, and a personal invite for Jane to talk about a new weed called white bryony?

- [Jane] White bryony.

It's kind of a tongue twist twister.

- So can't spell it.

- B-R-Y-O-N-Y.

And it's not so much a new weed.

It's a herbaceous vine, and it looks a lot like wild grape, and I think the first time we saw it in Bozeman was about 2008, 2009 on the north side of town.

And we did some outreach about... Yeah, we have a video of it right there.

You can see how much it looks like grapevine.

It's got purple berries this time of year.

What's really concerning about this plant is it looks a lot like grapes and it's highly toxic, and it will kind of crawl on other shrubs and trees and take over them.

It's been called the kudzu of the West, if you know what kudzu is.

- Mm-hmm.

- But those berries are highly toxic, and, like, human fatalities have been reported eating 40 berries or less.

And you can see, you know, if you're someone who likes to forage, or maybe you have kids that might see those berries, they're not to be messed with.

And we really encourage people to control it.

This is a great time of the year to control it.

You have to dig out the root and try to get three to four inches down into the ground to take out some of that root.

It will grow back, so you have to keep doing that a few times.

There's a photo of the flower.

That would be early in the summer, that eventually becomes those green and then kind of reddish and purple, grape-looking berries.

- So my question is, do birds eat those, and do birds survive?

Because they are pretty toxic berries.

And I'm saying that, because I haven't seen as many robins, which doesn't really bother me.

- [Jane] Oh yeah.

- But would it be toxic to birds?

- Well, birds do eat the berries.

I haven't heard about... I don't know if they would eat enough to die.

Although, I mean, humans don't have to eat that many berries.

That's a great question, Jack.

- Homework.

(laughs) - Yeah, we should, if anybody finds birds dead where they also have white bryony, I'd be really interested to know.

But what I suspect maybe happens is it causes birds to maybe have, like, diarrhea and then, you know, that's a way of dispersing those seeds.

- Yeah.

- Because you do tend to find it, like we've seen it in alleyways where there's a lot of power lines and it's possible that the seeds are getting dispersed, and then growing up and growing over people's shrubs and whatnot in the alleyways around town.

So be on the lookout for that.

It's probably in other urban areas in the state besides just Bozeman.

- [Joel] So how do you control it?

- Yeah, well, fall is a great time.

As those leaves die back, you're really looking at, like, digging up the root.

- Oh.

- You know, follow the vine back to where the root is coming out of the ground or the vine is coming out of the ground.

Try to get three or four inches of that, and then next spring do it again, you know, throughout the summer.

- Yeah.

All right.

- It can also be confused with nightshade.

- It could, yeah.

which also is toxic.

- Yeah.

Okay.

It's an interesting question.

It's a topic that's been in the news a lot, and I'm gonna throw this one to both Joel and Scott, and this is kind of one of those questions where you tread lightly, (Sam laughs) but this person from Bozeman would like to know if opening roadless areas in Montana forests would be good for economy.

Have at it, guys.

(laughs) - You want first shot?

- Sure, I will hop into that.

I like the very specific framework that would be put around there.

I think the two important qualifiers in that question are Montana and economy.

So to give a little bit of background, as far as what's going on with the recent effort to repeal the so-called Roadless Rule.

The specific part of the Roadless Rule we're looking at right now was put into place in the early 2000s during the Clinton administration, but it's part of a longer process that's gone back to an inventory that was done in the '70s, and it's kind of gone through a bunch of iterations, but the most recent one we're looking at right now is kind of a Clinton-era rule.

And the areas they're talking about, to be clear, they are areas within the national forest systems that are outside of wilderness.

So there were areas that when they were inventoried through that kind of 70s through the early 2000s, they were found to be roadless.

And for the most part they are roadless.

There are, you know, there's some mining roads and stuff on there, but I think it's reasonable to say they are roadless areas.

So now there's an effort to... Oh, and those areas when they were inventoried, they said okay, there's no roads here yet, so we're not gonna build any more roads now, and in order to log we need to build roads, right?

That's a key part of logging, especially here in the western United States.

Now, there's an effort to repeal that Roadless Rule, which would theoretically open up these areas to building roads, which could open them up to logging.

I think a couple bits of nuance on there.

So like I said, we're talking about between now and 2001.

We know that lumber prices haven't changed that much.

In that same period in early 2000s, a mile road, according to the Forest Service, cost about $20,000 a mile to build a forest road back then.

It costs about $70,000 a mile to build it now.

So the question there is if that area wasn't logged in the '90s and the '80s because it wasn't feasible, it probably is not gonna be feasible now either.

So it's probably more economic restrictions are gonna keep these areas from being roaded.

And I think on that same direction there, as far as the qualifiers of Montana and economy, we have... Oh, how do I say this?

(laughs) You're right, it is tread lightly.

I would guess that the economic benefits of opening up roadless areas to timber harvest are minimal, because roads are one of the most expensive parts of timber harvesting, and they are the primary reason that Forest Service- - Thank you for calling Montana Ag Live.

- Timber sales go no bid.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) when they get put up to auction, it's 'cause the road packages are too expensive.

So if you're going into an area to log that you need to build a road, it's probably unfeasible and, therefore, not an economic benefit.

- Joel, you got anything to add?

- So the short story is, I mean, the rule might change, but it's probably, there's not gonna be a lot of viable acres that are gonna open up if that rule changes.

I mean, there might be a handful of situations, but I don't think it's gonna see a drastic change in our forest harvest.

- But there is a little bit of a possible benefit, there could be some flexibility offered to managers.

Especially how, kind of, our communities have expanded over the past 25, 30 years into these wildland urban interface areas, there could be roadless areas that are near communities (Cheryl speaking faintly) that repealing the rule could allow managers a little bit more flexibility in managing fuels in those areas.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) But I think it would be a real small scale.

It's not a lot of acres we're talking about.

- So, (Cheryl speaking faintly) the lumber industry bids on- - This is Cheryl Bennet- - Tracks of timber, (Cheryl speaking faintly) and I'm curious, what do they pay for, say, an acre of timber or 100 acres?

A unit of timber, what does the government get back if a timber company wants to cut timber?

- Okay.

- Totally.

That is a great question (Cheryl speaking faintly) and part of the work we do at BBER is we do support the timber appraisal programs for Montana DNRC and R1.

To put it into an order of magnitude, timber on public lands is typically, we'll say this, it's typically sold by the ton, (Cheryl speaking faintly) and we're looking in the neighborhood of (sighs) two digits per ton.

Somewhere between $3 and $15 a ton is pretty reasonable.

If we put that into 1,000 board feet Scribner, which is kind of the standard metric, you know, we're looking at kind of $300/1,000 and that the price we're talking about here is called stumpage.

To get from that price to an acre, you'd have to know the density of the wood, (Cheryl speaking faintly) and how much wood is being removed.

So it's sold by the volume- - Okay.

- Or the mass, rather than the acre, if that doesn't answer your question.

- Okay.

It gives me an idea.

- Yep.

- May I have a follow up question?

- You sure can.

- There's also timber harvest that happens on private lands.

- Yep.

- Are there differences (Cheryl speaking faintly) in costs on private land versus public land?

'Cause I know, like, grazing leases are very different on private lands than public lands.

- Totally, yeah.

We would presume that there are differences between stumpage on private lands and public lands in Montana.

Unfortunately, we don't have a great idea about what stumpage is on private lands.

- Okay.

- Public stumpage is very well recorded.

Private stumpage is less recorded, but it does seem that many loggers tend to prefer bidding on timber sales, or bidding on timber, or, sorry, purchasing timber on private lands.

Part of that being cost, we presume, is lower, and the other part being just fewer hoops to jump through than dealing with public lands and the federal and state governments.

- Okay, thank you.

I learned something there.

Jane, this is a good question from Miles City.

(Cheryl and Bruce speaking faintly) This caller has a bunch of cattails along their irrigation ditch and would like to get rid of 'em.

It's next to a county road.

Any suggestions how to get rid of cattails?

- Oh wow.

Well, if you could get rid of the water, you would get rid of the cattails.

(Jack laughs) You know, they're there 'cause they like their feet wet.

- [Bruce] Thank you for calling Montana Ag Live.

From what city are you calling?

- I mean, probably, you're probably looking at, like, an aquatic labeled glyphosate product.

(Bruce speaking faintly) - [Jack] Rodeo?

- Yeah, like a Rodeo.

I always recommend, if people are going to do aquatic, I mean, there's a permitting process to apply aquatic herbicides, so you need to be working with the DEQ and the proper permitting process.

I would also think about, perhaps, contracting with a commercial applicator who has an aquatic applicator's license, because, you know, you're getting herbicide close to water, and you need to be very careful.

- But if it's not running water and- - Oh like a dry irrigation?

- It's a dry irrigation area, I suspect they could just go in with glyphosate and get rid of some of them.

- Yeah, I mean, and you'd wanna carefully read labels.

- You always read the labels.

(Jack laughs) - Yeah, always read the label.

- All right, thank you.

Joel, last week, this caller said, our economist last week, Eric, talked about cattle numbers being down, but what he's seeing is cattle numbers are down, prices are up.

Are we exporting a lot of our beef and making the American consumer pay for it by exporting beef?

- Well, we do export beef.

We're actually exporting considerably less this year than we did last year, partly 'cause of those lower inventory numbers, we are leaving animals in the feed lots longer, so they're heavier when they're coming to slaughter.

So inventory numbers are down, but the amount of beef we're producing isn't down nearly as much as the inventory numbers would say.

But what we tend to do with imports and exports has a lot to do with the consumer diet and the choices consumers make, so we eat lots of hamburger here in the US, a lot of ground product.

We don't eat very much of things like liver, kidney, tongue, heart, those type of lesser grades, but there is an international market for those, so a lot of those get exported.

But we also export a lot of high-end steaks.

So we're gonna export some of the highest-value cuts, those steaks, and we're also gonna, you know, export a lot of those lower-value cuts and then we're gonna bring in burger and sometimes a lot of that burger's gonna come from New Zealand, Australia.

It's gonna come in real lean, leaner than the American consumer wants it.

So we're gonna take trimmings from a US beef and we're gonna blend that, so that when it shows up in a grocery store, it's got that percentage of fat that the American consumer is used to buying.

- Okay, that makes good sense.

Thank you.

I got a couple more questions for Sam here in a moment.

But before we get there, a caller from Whitefish has two questions.

Number one, does the mountain pine beetle affect fir trees or just pines?

- I think it's just pines.

- I think you're- - But in the genus, yeah, pinus.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

(Sam laughs) Second part, can flea beetles control yellow leafy spurge that is found on the Milk River drainage?

For you, Jane.

- Oh yeah.

Yeah, I was thinking it was gonna go to Abi.

I was not paying (Jack laughs) as close of attention.

(Abi laughs) - You want me to reread it?

- No, flea beetles for leafy spurge.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Yeah, one of the success stories of biocontrol for noxious weeds.

Flea beetles, just like plants, just like humans, they kinda have their environment where and where they like to do best.

So with flea beetles, they tend to do better and be more effective in certain environments.

And it can be, you know, quite specific.

So my guess is... This along the Milk River?

My guess is over the years, flea beetles have been released there, and they kind of ebb and flow.

And yeah, the flea beetles are fairly widely distributed- - Good.

- Across the state.

- And they do better in some microclimates than they do others.

But if the person is interested in sweeping to see what sort of population of flea beetles they have, I would recommend that they reach out to their extension agent and/or weed district, and there are protocols for how you do that, and if your numbers are below a certain number, they would recommend releasing them again.

- Okay, thank you.

I wanna back up to the pine beetle question.

First, of all, it's not the pine beetle that kills the tree.

It's the fungus that they transmitted.

- Mm-hmm.

- Which is related to that thing that you have here.

- Mm-hmm.

- So if you wanna explain what's going on with that.

- Yeah.

- It's the same, a related fungus.

- It is, yeah.

- That causes blue stain of pine trees.

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so this is cytospora canker, and this is what it looks like on a spruce tree.

And what you might see in a landscape is you might see your spruce trees have patchy sections with dead branches that might be going up there, but you might start to see some oozing along the branches.

As the canker progresses, it looks more like this, where you have kind of more of that enlarged stem with more of that kind of gooey ooze coming out of it.

But it's interesting, because it looks very different on a spruce than it does on aspen, cottonwood.

This is a cottonwood that has cytospora canker, and what you see are those little orange fruiting bodies that are emerging out of it.

That's how it will spread, you know, by rain, wind, things like that, will carry the spores onto trees.

One of the things with this fungus is that it primarily impacts trees that are stressed.

So if you have this issue coming up, what you wanna do is you wanna take a whole look at your trees and see what could be impacting them, what could be stressing them out, and try to mitigate those stressors.

The branches that have these, they're eventually going to die, so you also want to prune out any affected vegetation.

If you can, make sure that you sanitize your pruning tools with at least 70% alcohol or a disinfectant spray in between each cut, so you're not spreading it from infected tissue to healthy tissue.

But this, yeah, this fungus can cause dieback, and is something, like, if you're seeing this, again, address the health of your tree.

- [Jack] Okay.

Thank you.

Is it as detrimental to aspen as it would be spruce?

I mean, obviously this doesn't look very healthy.

- Yeah.

(Jane laughs) Mm-hmm.

(laughs) - A chunk of a tree maybe.

- Looks like good fire wood.

(Jack laughs) - Yeah.

Yeah, so what you'd see is, like, a kind of a slow decline.

Yes.

- Okay.

- So what you may have seen in an aspen tree, if you see the main trunk with large, kind of orange sections, large orange splotchy sections, once it gets to larger branches or the trunk, it's just, like, a waiting game for when it will kill that tree.

- Okay.

- So the recommendation is to remove a tree, if its main trunk is infected, remove that tree from the landscape so it's not a source to other trees.

- Okay.

- So it can be very detrimental to all of the trees involved.

It looks more nondescript in a spruce.

It's kind of hard to notice.

- Yeah.

- Whereas when you see this, you'll see more orangy branches in, like, poplar, cottonwood, aspen.

- It's possible I have that at home.

(Jane laughs) - It is.

Yeah.

Maybe I'll come and take a look at your tree health.

- It's common.

- Yeah.

- It's very common.

- Thank you.

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay, a couple questions for Sam.

- Okay.

- This one came from Bozeman.

Caller asked what major countries the US has exports lumber to, and where is China on that list?

Any idea there?

- Yeah, definitely.

I can kind of give you a somewhat of a rundown.

So we are a net importer of lumber.

It's definitely the starting point.

We have been a net importer of lumber, my boss recently, jokingly, said, since probably the French-Indian war.

We don't really know.

Definitely since World War II, we've been a net importer of lumber.

We produce less lumber than we use.

And a lot of that additional, kind of that excess lumber demand in the United States, we take care of with our partners to the north.

Another kind of joke we use is, well, yeah, of course we import lumber from Canada.

The whole country is forest, and 12 people live there, (group laughs) and eight of 'em are lumberjacks.

So we're gonna bring lumber there.

But we are.

We're a net importer of lumber.

We do export some wood products, though.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) most of the wood products we export are to the Pacific Rim countries, and they're high-grade stuff.

So in particular to Japan, Korea, and China, we export logs, so round wood, just as whole logs, as well as specific types of high-grade structural and decorative lumber.

But as a whole, it's a pretty small piece.

I don't even know the number on top off the top of my head, but it is not a lot.

We are definitely more of an importer than an exporter.

- Okay.

A couple other questions while I have you up.

This is from St.

Ignatius, and the caller asked, "What's the negative impact on the Montana economy by importing Canadian lumber into the state."

And to add to that, another question, "Does a tariff on Canadian lumber increase our building costs here in Montana?"

- Those are two great questions (Cheryl speaking faintly) and I think the reasonable place to start there is a quick understanding of how lumber and log markets are different.

So within the forest products industry, on the demand side, we think about the demand side of the forest products industry to be more national or regional, right?

So we're looking at total housing starts in the west, or total housing starts across the United States.

Whereas on the supply side, the things that directly impact Montanans are more on the supply side.

It's at the mill level.

As far as Canadian lumber coming into Montana, I don't even know how much Canadian lumber comes into Montana, 'cause that's not really how the market works.

Large brokers and large distributors purchase lumber and send them throughout their networks, to Home Depot, Lowe's, all of your other networks.

So as far as Canadian lumber coming into Montana, it certainly crosses through the Montana border, but it's not, like, going straight to your local Home Depot.

- Right.

- And it just came across the border from Skookumchuck, or something like that.

It doesn't exactly work like that.

I can say, anecdotally, talking to mill operators, they definitely do feel the pressure from Canadian lumber, especially with their purchasers.

A fair number of companies in Montana are secondary manufacturing facilities, so they purchase lumber and then make other things out of 'em, such as, you know, glulam, other mass timber products, cross-laminated timber, window trimming, that kind of thing.

And we really can see the Canadian competition when we look at those markets, so when you drive by a secondary mill that has all the wrapped lumber out in front, look at where it's from, and that'll tell you where it's getting it from.

So yes, anecdotally, our local sawmills in Montana do feel the competition from Canada.

Academically, the studies that have been done as far as the impact on building prices and on especially domestic lumber price, the elasticity is pretty small.

- Okay.

- So a 25%, the most recent study I read said a 25% Canadian lumber tariff would increase the domestic US lumber price by something like 2 or 3%.

So it's a pretty small impact, but it's more impactful in certain areas and certain regions and for certain products than others.

So it's kind of hard to paint with a broad brush.

- I've been told that lumber's cheaper in the winter than it is in July.

Is that true?

- That is true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So if we think about supply and demand, right, when demand goes up, if supply doesn't change, what happens, economist?

(Jack laughs) - Price changes.

- Price changes, right, right, right.

We're moving the two lines on our supply and demand.

- Seems more fun to go build a deck, though, in June than it does in December.

(group laughs) - Exactly.

It's more fun to build a deck in June, so more people are building decks in June, and that also creates some pretty interesting futures markets, if you're into that.

Sometimes it's fun to bet in the winter on what's gonna happen with the building season in the summer.

I think those people have deeper pocketbooks than I do.

(laughs) - Okay.

Jane, thank you guys for that though, but from an email from Three Forks, it says, "The Montana Department of Ag reports rush skeletonweed was found west of town on I-90.

Is it becoming more of an issue in the state?"

And they want to know, can the public help in identifying problem areas with noxious weeds?

- Yeah, that's great, great question, great point to bring up.

So just a couple, I think a week to two weeks ago, the Department of Ag put out a news release about the finding of rush skeletonweed in the Three Forks area.

I think we have a photo of rush skeletonweed.

Yeah, there it is.

It looks like a skeleton of a plant.

Doesn't have a lot of leaves, just stems, and then these bright yellow flowers.

This is a great time of the year to see it, 'cause it's still green.

But it's not widely distributed across the state.

It's mostly on the west side of the continental divide, and it's been in fairly small patches that the state is working- - Thank you for calling Montana Ag Live.

- With all the counties to try to keep it contained.

But this summer, we have seen it showing up- - [Cheryl] Okay, and what's your question for our panelists?

- Further east than in years past, including on the east side of the divide.

And that has us concerned.

It does have a wind-borne seed.

This was found along I-90, so probably moved through vehicles and equipment.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) So yeah, we're encouraging people to be on the lookout for that.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) And if they see a plant that they think is rush skeletonweed, they should reach out to their local extension agent.

They could reach out to their weed district, or they could reach out directly to the Department of Agriculture.

But it'd probably be easier to start local, and then it'll work its way up through the system.

- Has it been found in Gallatin or Broadwater County prior to that identification by Three Forks?

- No.

About two falls ago, a patch was found near East Helena- - Okay.

- In Lewis and Clark County.

But if I remember correctly, this is the first finding in Broadwater County.

And it is a big problem in crop systems in Australia and in Washington state.

So, you know, a lot of our species on the noxious weed list are mostly problems in range, in wild lands, forests, not so much crop systems.

But this is a species that we're really concerned about it getting into our grain producing regions.

- Okay.

I have another question while I have you up.

This came from Laurel, and the caller would ask Jane if there are more than one type of nightshade, and can the same type of nightshade be made into jam?

I don't think so.

- Oh.

Yes, there are different types of nightshade, and I don't think you would wanna make any of them into jam, because they're nightshades which have some degree of toxicity.

- Quite a bit of toxicity- - Yeah.

- In some cases.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Joel, an interesting question.

By the way, folks, if you have comments, I will air the comments.

Just call 'em in, and if they're not too negative, I'll put 'em on the air.

(group laughs) If they're really negative, you might not hear 'em.

(group laughs) But anyway, there's a question here for Joel, and it's kind of pertinent.

This just came in from Big Timber.

This person wants to know, will the interest rate cuts that just occurred by the Fed, will that help Montana agriculture?

- Well, it depends a little bit on who you are.

So first of all, the Fed, the rate that they adjust or change from time to time, the Free Market Open Committee meets, I think, every six or eight weeks, something like that, and they lowered it by 0.25, so a quarter of a percentage point.

But that's the rate that the banks can borrow from the Fed, which isn't a rate that you and I would ever borrow at, or any Montanan, right?

This is very much an institutional rate.

But a lot of banks use that as a benchmark to set their other rates.

So when it drops by a quarter point, it's likely that a lot of auto loans might drop by a roughly similar amount, or a home loan, or an ag operating loan, or an ag real estate loan.

So if you are in the market to make a purchase, you know, now that the Fed lowered rates by 0.25%, that next loan you get is likely to be at a little bit lower rate, which makes it a little more affordable for you to buy real estate or buy equipment or have that operating loan.

So that could be a good thing.

Encourage a little bit of investment.

The other side of that, though, is that's also the rate that, you know, we use to set interest rates in terms of CDs, savings accounts and those type of things.

So if you've got money sitting in the bank, the rate you're gonna be returning probably dropped a little bit as well.

So it depends on, if you're a saver, it's probably a bad thing.

If you're gonna be in the market to borrow some money, then it's probably gonna be a good thing.

But again, that's only on kind of new loans, right?

So if you bought, you know, a farm four years ago on a real estate loan and a 30-year fixed-rate rate, that doesn't change.

So the only way it would help you is if you refinanced that loan at the lower rate.

- Okay.

I have another one for you, and I love these, because I don't think we're- - [Joel] Keep 'em coming.

(Jack laughs) - Okay, this one comes from Seeley Lake, and the caller asked if the proposed roadless bill passes and more roads are allowed to be opened, will that help increase efforts to mine rare earth minerals in previous roadless areas?

- Ah.

- Have at it.

(Jack laughs) - All right.

Well, assuming it, you know, it is access to the forest, not just for timber, like we kind of talked about earlier.

I mean, if there are other mineral reserves or resources, you know, the ability to build a road might make a deposit more accessible that wasn't in the past.

I don't know how many deposits we have that weren't accessible before, but if that was the barrier to accessing a particular one, I'm sure all the other permitting processes would still have to happen.

That might make it a little bit easier to access the site.

- Okay, thank you.

I didn't stump you too bad.

- Not yet.

(group laughs) There's still time.

- I'm working on it.

The night's still early.

(Abi laughs) You could give them one of our questions.

- Yeah.

- Maybe that's- - (laughs) That's a good idea.

- I could be easily stumped if we get into weeds.

(Abi laughs) - Likewise, if we had to answer yours.

- All right.

From Helena.

This is an interesting one, 'cause I can't quite visualize this.

(Bruce speaking faintly) But Abi, this caller has what he calls aphid nests in an apple tree.

How should these aphids be controlled through the winter?

Make any sense from that?

- Yeah, so what you're describing as aphid nest is probably aggregations of aphids that are hunkering down in, you know, protected areas.

Oftentimes aphids will nest on the underside of leaves, and you might have those leaves curl ups, so it looks like a nice protected section.

They might be along the crooks of branches, and stuff like that.

One of the things that you can do at this time of year for that is to hose them off really well with a strong jet of water.

Aphids a very soft bodies, so they're not very resilient to that.

And if they get knocked off a tree, if you knock off enough of that population, it's gonna reduce the population that survives and impacts your trees next year, so I would say hose them off really well.

If you're still having issues with aphids, you can use insecticides, so horticultural oils, insecticidal soaps work pretty well, but one of the issues was that with that is you need to make sure that you really come into contact with the aphids.

So you need to get to all the undersides of those leaves of those protected sections.

But at this time of year, since that tree is going to drop its foliage soon anyways, I would say this would be a good time to just hose them off of there and then maybe plan, if you continue to have issues with this, you can plan an insecticide strategy for next year.

(Bruce and Cheryl speaking faintly) - Oh, I have a follow up question.

- Mm-hmm.

- You know, you see in a lot of the biological control magazines, and other places, you can buy ladybugs to feed on your aphids.

- Mm-hmm.

- Does that work pretty well?

- No.

- Okay.

(laughs) - So I'm glad you asked that.

That is a good question.

So bio controls work really well in a home landscape, and aphids are one of those insects that are easily controlled by natural enemies, so predators, parasites, parasitoids that live in the environment.

But when you're buying lady beetles and releasing them in your landscape, there are a few reasons why that could be a bad thing.

One is, a lot of times these lady beetles are collected from overwintering sites.

So their normal strategy when you release them somewhere is to migrate.

So they're gonna go.

They're gonna leave that area.

They're not gonna stick around to have enough of an impact.

In contained environments, like in a greenhouse, that sort of introduction of biocontrol agents can work, but in a landscape, it's usually not very effective.

So in that situation, we like to encourage conservation biological control, which means that you encourage the natural enemies, so native lady beetle species that are already in your landscape, encourage populations of them by being responsible with IPM practices, reducing broad spectrum pesticides that can negatively impact these, creating more habitat for them, that can help naturally control them.

But introducing lady beetles, it can displace, you know, local populations of native insects, and it can also introduce, potentially, diseases, and also it's not that effective.

- But last week I heard that one lady beetle larvae can eat 100 aphids a day, so- - It can eat, yeah, dozens of aphids a day, but it won't lay the eggs to have the largest- - I know.

Okay.

- But they are great predators.

- I understand that.

- Mm-hmm.

- From Superior, and we don't getting many calls from Superior, which for people in the eastern part of the state, is one of the farthest most western towns in this state.

But this person would like to know, Sam, are there any wood product manufacturers in Montana that make products out of wood?

Like, you know, pallets or other products?

A finished wood product industry.

- Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Pencils.

- Yep, pencils.

Actually we got a couple good points.

We got a little prop of the, not Montana, but a wood product.

Well, it's good to hear from Mineral County.

As soon as you said Superior, I was like, oh, I bet this question is coming my way, for sure.

(Jack laughs) Yes, we do have a variety of manufacturers that make finished wood products in Montana.

I mean, a lot of our sawmills, a lot of that lumber they make is a finished wood product that goes, essentially, in its current form, to the final consumer.

Whether that's a general contractor or you're going to the home goods store, but there's also a few other manufacturers, some that are primary.

I think a good example is Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge, the largest sawmill in the state, and an interesting finished product they produce there is called finger-jointed stud lumber.

So if you picture a whole bunch of, you know, two-by stud material, and it's got a bunch of knots, and it's kind of not all that great, you can cut out all those good sections and then run it through a milling machine to cut fingers on the end of it, and then glue those fingers together, and now you have, you know, a stud that's 10 feet long that's made out of seven sections of this bit of stud.

And that's a finished product that's ready to build.

They send a lot of that down to the southeast.

They really like it down there in the climate as a structural number, something you're gonna not see, inside of a wall.

We do have one mass timber manufacturing facility up in Columbia Falls- - Thank you for calling Montana Ag Live.

- SmartLam.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) They make cross-laminated timber, which is kind of just gluing a whole bunch of boards together like this, and then like this.

Yes, and we have that map up there.

You can see a lot of it's focused up in the northwest.

And we do have, we have a variety of other manufacturing facilities that make finished products as well.

Yes, we do.

- You know, I had a good friend that owned a business in Manhattan called Big Sky Carvers that made a lot of wooden decoys.

- Right.

- For a lot of years.

They did not use Montana timber.

They used Oregon sugar pine, because it wouldn't, what they call check, or split, after it was dried.

- Right.

- Which brings up another question: is Oregon the major exporter or major lumber producer in the United States?

- Oregon is, certainly.

I guess we'll do two points there.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) Yes, a lot of secondary manufacturing facilities in Montana do not use Montana wood for a variety of reasons.

The first would just be the scale of our wood products industry.

Bringing up Oregon is a really good example.

Oregon is currently about the third-largest timber-producing state in the United States.

Any guesses on what number one is?

- Someplace on the east.

- I was gonna say Georgia.

- I would say southeast.

- Yep, it's gonna be, we're talking Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina.

That's the biggest timber-producing Oregon's kind of third or fourth on that list.

To put things into perspective, in Montana, we harvest about 250 million board feet of timber a year.

Oregon harvests over 3 billion a year.

Idaho harvests a billion a year.

California harvests a billion and a half.

Washington's two and a half billion.

So we're pretty small fish, (Cheryl speaking faintly) but obviously, the wood products industry is more important locally to us than it is nationally.

We don't really move the needle that much on the national wood products market, but for the communities here and our landscapes and the areas we care about, it's really important.

- Is transportation out of Montana an issue with the wood products?

- Transportation out of Montana is- - [Cheryl] Thank you so much for your call.

- It's certainly more of an issue than it would be in some places.

Obviously, we talked about exports, so that would be the first obvious one.

It's a little bit harder to export to the Pacific Rim from Montana, than, say, from Coos Bay, Oregon.

But we do have rail access, not as much as some other areas.

I would say again in the southeast, that's an advantage they have, is an extensive rail and highway network, access to ports, as well as just, they don't have to go as far.

About half of all new homes being built are being built in the southeast, so that wood just doesn't have to go as far.

- [Cheryl] Thank you for calling Montana Ag Live.

- I would say the transportation issue we do have in the state is on the other side of the mill.

It's where the wood's coming in.

- Okay.

- And that's the haul cost of getting logs from a forest treatment area, (Cheryl speaking faintly) from a stand, from a logging operation, to the mill.

And if we have a second to talk about some of those numbers, I could get more specific.

But that is, that's one of the biggest issues we have in Montana.

Even though we have this kind of, what we call theoretical capacity to handle a lot more timber harvest through our existing mills, we've run into a problem where we can't, the areas we want to treat are too far away from a mill to make that timber harvest economically feasible.

So our transportation issues on the other side.

- So do we ever send, like, timber, say, from Miles City (Cheryl speaking faintly) to South Dakota or Wyoming, just 'cause there's a mill?

- Sure.

- The local mill might not be in state.

Does that happen?

- Yeah, definitely.

We do a fair amount of, kind of, interstate log travel.

Obviously lumber goes everywhere, but you know, logs are round, and lumber's square.

That's the way to keep 'em straight.

(Joel laughs) No pun intended.

So log transport does leave the state.

I think in the southeast part of the state, foresters don't talk about it a whole lot, but it is definitely important, if you're down in kind of that Ashland, Camp Crook area.

There's a lot of really good ponderosa pine down there.

That's pretty high-quality, a lot of it they call bull pine, and it's used for window trimmings and moldings, and it's good, clear wood.

It comes in short sections, but it's good, clear wood.

(Cheryl speaking faintly) But the majority of that is getting processed in Wyoming and South Dakota through large ponderosa pine mills.

And then in the western side of the state.

We do send a fair amount of wood over into the Idaho panhandle as well.

- Okay, thank you.

(chuckles) This is a tough one for Jane, and I'll let you slide by kind of easy with this one.

(Jane laughs) It's from Arlee, and this caller has noticed (Cheryl speaking faintly) an abundance of new weeds on Highway 93 north of Arlee.

Are these new species of weeds or just an absence of highway right-of-way mowing or weed control?

That's not an easy question to answer.

- No, it's not.

And I haven't been up in that area this summer, so I haven't seen that myself.

But I guess what I can say is just, like, our highways are, I mean, they're one of the main vectors of species being moved around.

I mean, we've talked about, you know, lumber transportation and log transportation, but a lot of weeds are getting moved around, too.

So I would just encourage people, if you think you're seeing something new along the highway you've never seen before, reach out to the local extension or weed district office.

- Exactly.

- And let us know.

'Cause it could be the rush skeletonweed plant.

It could be yellow star thistle.

It could be one of those species that's high priority that we're trying to keep out of the state.

- Okay.

Abi, we have one, and I want to get to this.

You brought this in specifically because we see a lot of anthracnose on maple.

You want to touch on that a little bit?

- Mm-hmm.

- We don't have a lot of time left.

- Yeah.

- But if we could bring that slide up- - Yeah.

- Of anthracnose on maple, it'd be great.

- Yeah.

So our wonderful plant pathologists for Eva Grimme was, telling me that a lot of anthracnose questions have been coming into the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, and this is just a foliar fungal disease, so it starts to infect kind of new young leaves, and then those little black spots start to turn into larger splotches.

You might eventually have dieback in the branches, but one of the best ways to take care of this issue is to practice good sanitation in your landscape, and so that means that as those leaves drop off of the branches, you wanna take all those leaves and remove them from that landscape.

You don't wanna stick them in your compost.

You don't wanna leave them as-is, but that can help reduce just the proportion of these.

So if this is kind of a one-off issue where you've only had it like once every few years or so, I would practice sanitation.

But if this is something that's continuing to impact your tree year after year, it can start to negatively impact the health of your trees.

In that case, you may wanna apply a protectant fungicide the following spring when those leaves start to emerge before that infection takes place.

- [Bruce] Thank you for calling Montana Ag Live.

- And you'd do this preventatively.

And so you can use copper-based fungicide products or chlorothalonil, (Bruce speaking faintly) and that can help prevent this issue from occurring, and can help protect your tree.

- The other thing you can do, if you can possibly do it, is avoid irrigating your tree overhead.

- Mm-hmm.

- Because I have a lot of anthracnose on my relatively young maples.

And it does slow the growth down.

There's no doubt about it.

- Mm-hmm.

- So Sam, we're getting down to the end here.

We got a little time left.

(Bruce speaking faintly) Any good news in the foresting industry?

You know, that is a great point.

Something I definitely do wanna talk about.

There is good news in the wood products industry.

I know both as an economist, what do they call it?

The dismal science.

We're usually always just bringing bad news.

And as a forest economist in the Intermountain West, (Bruce speaking faintly) that seems to be most of my job is giving bad news.

But I think there is some good news, and maybe I'm just too much of an optimist for this job, and I think that's, kind of, the power of wood products moving forward, both as a building material and and as a fuel of, as we move kind of away from fossil fuels and towards these more sustainable options.

It can be locally grown, locally harvested, replanted.

Montanans can be put to work for these resources, rather than some foreign resource, and I think consumer taste is headed that way, too, with kind of modern wood products, as far as we talked about cross-laminated timber and glulam and all of these products.

So I think there's good news coming down the way.

I don't think wood products are going anywhere.

It's just gonna look different.

- Yeah, that is good news, and it is a great industry, and historically, Montana has always been a wood products industry state.

A lot of jobs created over the years.

So folks, we're down to the end again.

I want to thank Sam for coming over from the University of Montana to join us this evening.

We've learned a lot.

I've learned a lot.

The rest of the panel, Joel, Mary.

(laughs) (group laughs) Jane.

- I'm gonna tell her you called me Mary.

- Okay, and Abi, thanks for being here.

(bright guitar music) We'll be back next week with Doug Holen, and Doug is the manager of our Foundation Seed Program here in the state of Montana.

And I tell you what, it is one of the best, best programs we have at Montana State University.

Have a good week, join us next week, and good night.

- [Announcer] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

(bright guitar music continues) - [Narrator] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by: (bright guitar music) the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

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