AgEBB-MU CAFNR Extension
Green Horizons
Volume 21, Number 2
Spring 2017
Missouri Tree Farm News
By Matt Jones | Missouri Tree Farm Committee
National Leadership Conference. The Tree Farm National Leadership Conference was held February 22-24 in Greenville, South Carolina. Representing the Missouri Tree Farm Committee were Mike Hoffmann, Executive Director of the Forest and Woodland Association of Missouri; Mike Morris, MDC Tree Farm Advisor: Matt Jones, Vice-chair of the committee: and Jim Ball, 2017 Missouri Tree Farmer of the Year. A key goal of the Missouri Committee is to get more Tree Farmer involvement and we were glad Jim could make the trip.
The most interesting presentation at the conference was outreach effort to minority landowners in South Carolina. A coalition developed the Sustainable Forestry and Land Retention Program that is bringing together a wide range of federal and state agencies, industry and conservation partners to help African American forest landowners retain their lands and experience the benefits of forestry. The program has been a great success in the limited focus area and has brought many enthusiastic minority forest landowners into the Tree Farm program.
Third Party Assessment. As part of being a Forest Certification Program, the American Forest Foundation (AFF) is audited every year to make sure they are meeting the certification requirements. Field audits for any given state occur every three years. Missouri will be audited in 2018. Auditors from Pricewaterhouse Coopers (sic) will inspect several randomly selected Tree Farms to make sure they comply with the AFF Standards. They will also look at the structure of the state committee and inspect our database to make sure it is up to snuff. We should be in good shape, but the committee will spend considerable time this year getting things in order.
2017 Missouri Tree Farm Conference. On May 19th and 20th, Jim Ball hosted the annual Tree Farm Conference at his Tree Farm in Caldwell County near Chillicothe, Missouri. Jim had quite a few things to show attendees. But, the most interesting discovery was some apparent herbicide damage to his walnut trees. At the time of this writing, state agricultural authorities are investigating potential herbicide drift from an adjoining neig