A forest product is any material derived from forestry for direct consumption or commercial use, such as lumber, paper, or fodder for livestock.
[6] The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations publishes an annual yearbook of forest products.
Statistical information in the yearbook is based primarily on data provided to the FAO Forestry Department by the countries through questionnaires or official publications.
Pulp and paper industry has high volume demand for the wood materials including both softwood and hardwood.
Forests not only sequester carbon dioxide and provide oxygen but also play an essential role in our ecosystem.
Forests are crucial to avoid soil erosion, control pollutants, balance the eco-system, and so on.
FAO, which supported the classification of wood pellets in 2012 and has tracked them ever since, has found production jumping nearly 150 percent to 44 million tonnes by 2021: it largely ascribes this expansion to rising demand driven by the European Commission’s bioenergy targets.
First, as mentioned above, bioenergy can replace fossil energy and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions although its combustion initially produces more GHG than fossil fuels per unit of produced energy: it takes several decades or even centuries for new trees to re-absorb the carbon emitted by burning their predecessors.
Deforestation, global warming and other environmental concerns have increasingly affected the availability and sustainability of forest products, as well as the economies of regions dependent upon forestry around the world.
In recent years, the idea of sustainable forestry, which aims to preserve crop yields without causing irreversible damage to ecosystem health, has changed the relationship between environmentalists and the forest products industry.