The third largest forest power in Europe, France is struggling to develop a resource that is still largely under-industrialized.
For the unsuspecting walker, the forest massif which dominates Saint-Die-des-Vosges is no different from the others. Endless conifers, spruce, fir, Douglas fir ... But a more attentive eye will notice a certain diversity. Here the forest seems well maintained, where it appears to be left to itself. Young shrubs rub shoulders with gigantic trees which, further down, border a clear-cut space dotted with stumps. The massif is actually made up of a multitude of tiny parcels, owned by as many owners. Most do not exceed 30 ares, less than a third of a hectare! During the last campaign in this sector, Alain Pierrat, a forestry technician from the Forests and Woods of the East cooperative based in Epinal, had to work on more than twenty scattered parcels belonging to five different people to collect 1 300 cubic meters of wood. "It is sometimes the cross and the banner to find the owners. Some do not even know that they own a small piece of forest, "he says. On the side of the road, the piles of logs - sometimes less than 2 cubic meters - are to the measure of this work of ant.
This Vosges forest is no exception. The 11 million hectares covered by private forests in France are distributed among about 3,5 million owners ... a quarter of which never set foot in their woods, and only half of them do maintenance work there. This fragmentation is one of the major handicaps for the French forestry sector, unable to compete with its European competitors.
After oil, wood represents the second largest trade deficit of France. It has widened in 2005, to reach 4,7 billion euros. If we export raw wood, we import in bulk finished and semi-finished products. "It's the structure of an underdeveloped country economy," says Jean-Marie Barbier, general manager of the National Federation of Silvicultural Forest Owners' Unions. A shame, for a country that has the third forest in Europe, after Sweden and Finland. What's more, it has the advantage of being very diversified (more than 130 species) and to continue to grow: for a decade, the forest area has increased by about 40 000 hectares per year on agricultural land. "We did not succeed at all in the revolution that agriculture led in the 60 years," regrets Jean-Claude Monin, delegate president of the National Federation of Forest Commons of France. It's detrimental because the market is not waiting. "
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