Subsidies Depress Competition in Alternative Fibers

One out of every two trees cut in this country from private and public lands is wasted through inefficient utilization and lack of recycling. Despite the existence of alternative pulp fibers such as wheat straw, bamboo, hemp and kenaf, one National Forest tree in three goes to pulp and paper production.
    Approximately 22 percent of the timber logged in National Forests goes directly into pulp and paper manufacture. Another 10 percent is funneled indirectly into pulp and paper in the form of lumber co-products (chips, sawdust, etc.). Pulp and paper is thus a major economic force driving logging on public lands. Nonwoods currently make -Lip less than I percent of the U.S. fiber supply. By contrast, nonwoods are the dominant source of fiber in such countries as China and India. But farmers and other domestic recycled and nonwood paper manufacturers cannot compete with the virtually free fiber from the National Forests now available.
    There is no shortage of nonwood fiber material in this country. U.S. farmers annually generate an
estimated 280 million tons of excess agricultural fiber, suitable for papermaking. Generally these sources can be pulped with higher fiber yields than wood and require fewer chemicals to be processed, less water, and less energy.
    If the flow of free fiber from the National Forests ceased, benefits to farmers would include: new income from the sale of residues that would otherwise be buried; new opportunities for value-added rotational crops; new uses for over 65 million acres of idle farmland in the United States; and new replacement options for declining industries such as tobacco.
    In addition, fiber can be mined from landfills and kept out of them altogether through recycling and conservation. For example, approximately 48 percent of all U.S. hardwood lumber produced in 1992 was used to manufacture shipping pallets. Fifty-four percent of these pallets are used just once, then discarded in landfills. In fact, half the volume in the nation's landfills is reusable, but wasted, wood and paper fiber.

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