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LSU AgCenter profiles detail forestry’s economic reach by parish

LSU AgCenter profiles detail forestry’s economic reach by parish (08/14/18) BATON ROUGE, La. — Forestry is Louisiana’s top-grossing agricultural commodity. The forestry sector has a total annual output of approximately $13 billion according to the LSU AgCenter and reaches every parish in the state. AgCenter assistant professor of forest economics Shaun Tangerrecently compiled economic profiles of the forestry industry in all 64 parishes. “We wanted to put this out because it gives us a more complete picture of what forestry means to each parish,” Tanger said The profiles provide a snapshot of how the forest products industry contributes to each parish economy through jobs, wages and purchases in the local economy as well as local, state and federal taxes. Tanger said indirect purchases, those that the forest sector as a whole makes from other industries, and induced purchases, such as the spending by employees from the forest sector on goods and services in the community, were also factored into the total contribution. The profiles also detail the number of people the forestry industry employs in each parish. These profiles will be beneficial to parish police juries, landowners and companies looking for logging workforce and other supply chain infrastructure, Tanger said. And the Louisiana Forestry Association will use these for state and local advocacy. The forestry industry contributed nearly $1 billion in local, state and federal taxes in 2015 (in 2017 dollars) and employs more than 50,000 people in Louisiana. The results were obtained using an input-output model. “This can illustrate a sector or group of sectors importance to the overall economy,” Tanger said. The profiles can be found at http://bit.ly/lsuagcenterforestry.