| A growing demand for biomass to create renewable energy generated from food-based feedstocks have led to concerns regarding food security and the negative environmental impacts that would occur from massive scale production. These concerns have prompted woody biomass markets to increase because of multiple advantages, such as healthier forests and rural economic development. Forty-percent of the United States' timberlands are in the Southern states and 71-percent of these lands are owned by nonindustrial private forest landowners, so it is important to address the various factors that would influence marketing traditional timberland products as biomass and bio-energy feedstocks, including economics. |
Updated 02/23/2014