Documenting the Kentucky Forestry Economic Impact

Kentucky’s forests cover nearly half the Commonwealth but only scattered information had existed on the overall economic impact of Kentucky’s forest and wood industry. To address this shortfall, a team of faculty and staff from the University of Kentucky Departments of Forestry and Agricultural Economics (Drs. Jeff Stringer, Alison Davis, and Terrell Baker along with staff members Bobby Ammerman and Billy Thomas) worked closely to compile data from a wide variety of sources for the Kentucky forest and wood industry. In 2013 this data was summarized and analyzed to assemble a comprehensive report on the Kentucky forest and wood industry. The subsequent extension publications (FORFS 13-03 and FORFS 13-04) that were developed as a result of this project revealed the forest and wood industry in Kentucky is a significant contributor to the Commonwealth’s economy.

In 2018 the publication was updated to include the current reporting year - 2017 (FORFS 18-04). The publication showed an economic impact of the Kentucky Forestry Sector to be $8.4 billion in 2017 in direct economic impact and over 13 billion in indirect and induced and provided a total of more than 59,451 jobs.  A presentation was given by Jeff Stringer at the Kentucky Farm Bureau meeting in Louisville Kentucky in the fall of 2017 on the report. In addition, at the 2018 Forest Industry Association Meeting Several media outlets picked up the release of the publication.