This is a a sign of how low the licensees are pushing the prices of their contractors' services. This is true not only in silviculture, but also harvesting and trucking.

It is one of the many factors which is causing the the safety record of the forest industry to remain the worst of all industries.

I forgot to mention that the other situation which will likely get worse in the short term is that the payment to treeplanters is no longer keeping pace with other jobs they can get without all the hardships of working out of camps and in hot, or wet, or cold, or buggy, etc. field conditions.

There were manpower shortages this year and they are expected to get worse next year. Don,t be surprised if we get temporary foreign workers in this industry soon.

Ask any business owner what has been happening to their cost of doing business over the past 5 years or so? Costs have been continually rising.

In the silvaculture business, the companies who put the contracts out to bid are paying less and less. If you want the work, you need to underbid everyone else.

Well, there comes a time when the margins are gone, the profits are eroded and all that is left is to hopefully break even.

Silvaram has been known as one the most successful and largest in this neck of the woods for a number of years. If they can't make a go of it, what is in store for the rest?

The larger companies who are wanting their trees planted, better be willing to invest more of their profits into reforestation, or they will be cutting their future throats.

Nobody is expected to work for nothing. In order to survive in the tree planting business, it was becoming necessary to grow, expand and consolidate with other companies to create economies of scale. Even that hasn't been enough to survive, apparently. Chester

I whole heartedly agree with previous comments in regards to the cost of doing business increasing while the $$ being paid by licensees for any type of forestry work (be it consulting services, or silviculture contractors) is either decreasing, or at least not keeping pace with the cost increases.
The margins are definitely gone, and trying to keep good employees around is impossible. Licensees who have been making 100 to 600 million dollars a year in net profits need to share the wealth or risk not having anyone left to do the work for them.