FAO committee on forest development in the tropics
Transport, handling and packaging of forest products
FAO forestry personnel
The second session of the FAO Committee on Forest Development in the Tropics (CFDT) was held from 21 to 24 October 1969 at FAO Headquarters, Rome. Total membership of the committee is at present 30 countries, and 19 of these were represented: Argentina, Australia, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Federal Republic of Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Malaysia, Netherlands (Surinam), Tanzania, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Zambia. Observers attended from 13 countries: Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Colombia, Kenya, Nepal, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Togo, Uganda and Upper Volta. Four international organizations were represented.
The following were elected officers of the committee: Chairman, Krit Samapuddhi (Thailand); vice-chairmen, J. Ponce Díaz (Cuba), R. Catinot (France), J.H. François (Ghana); rapporteur, Frank H. Wadsworth (United States). The report of this session of CFDT is shortly to be released. It will, in brief, deal with shifting cultivation in tropical forests; a code of forest management for the dense natural forests of Africa, prepared by M. Catinot of the Centre technique forestier tropical, Paris; the different types of afforestation practice in the tropics which have loosely been called enrichment planting; the role of tree plantations in savanna development; comparative provenance trials of forest plantation species in the tropics; raw materials for pulp and paper in tropical countries; the role of wildlife and national parks in tropical forestry; and expanding markets for tropical timbers - the role of utilization research.
In relation to the last item the committee was informed about the possible establishment of a Tropical Timber Bureau through the efforts of the International Trade Centre of UNCTAD and GATT, FAO and the United Nations Development Programme, and of the intention of Section 41 of IUFRO to form a new working group on tropical timbers. The committee requested FAO to undertake an examination of the prospects of more concentrated research in established laboratories on (a) established product lines and (b) potential new and unconventional products from tropical woods.
Finally, the committee recommended that for the future three broad fields of activity should receive special attention:
1. tree improvement, including provenance trials, tree breeding, and the collection and distribution of tree seeds;2. cost-benefit studies of all aspects of tropical forestry including the non-wood services of forests;
3. market research with particular reference to the less-known tropical woods.
In September 1969 the Swedish International Development Agency was host to an FAO training centre on timber transportation. Foresters, mill managers, representatives of port authorities and shipping companies from eight; countries of east and west Africa all had one interest in common -the transport and distribution of wood and wood products in a more efficient manner.
The training centre was organized by G. Segerström of FAO, together with C.A. Jacobson, an FAO associate expert who unfortunately- was killed in an automobile accident during the course.
The object of the exercise was to provide experience for evaluation of future cargo handling requirements in various countries of Africa and the satisfaction of these requirements by methods appropriate to a given environment. Few of the participants had had any previous contact with Sweden, although it is one of the leading countries in the world in this field. There are also transport flows similar to that of some of the developing countries, with many small units of production. The transport and distribution problems have to a great extent been solved satisfactorily in Sweden through the medium of timber terminals. Many sawmill companies have created organizations for collecting and stocking the finished products, sometimes even arranging for their sale. These sales and distribution terminals are an example of one solution which could be adopted by the developing countries.
The participants drew a lot of valuable ideas from the advanced system of unit loads on pallets and containerization introduced by the Swedish state railway. Also from the programmes of some Swedish companies to mechanize their transportation, including transport of the raw material to the mills. The Swedish Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA) has been very successful with its system (see Unasylva, Vol.22, No.91) which is built up around two terminals in Sweden and four on the continent of Europe and in the United Kingdom.
The participants visited a number of ports to study how to overcome port congestion, the problems of containerization, and how to use and direct men and machines so as to give the highest productivity.
This training centre followed a seminar on the transport, handling and packaging of sawn softwood organized in London a year earlier by the ECE/FAO Timber Division, Geneva. The seminar was attended by some 225 delegates from 17 countries representing the principal interest involved in the movement of sawn timber from the producer's mill to the consumer. Exporters, importers, merchants, manufacturers, stevedores, shipowners, dock and harbour authorities all contributed to the discussions.
Delegates from producing countries outlined the problems. with which they were faced in arranging fully packaged cargoes under the present selling policies, which were required to satisfy importers' demands for small quantities of too many sizes in individual shipments. With the promised introduction of metric measures in the European timber trade in 1970, the opportunity has been taken to reduce materially the number of sizes, which should facilitate the delivery of all-packaged-to-length cargoes. Nevertheless, European building requirements call for a far greater range of sizes than, for instance, in the United States, where modern dwelling construction techniques have led to a standardization of carcassing lumber requirements to five sizes, all of which have a common thickness of 15/8 inch. As a consequence, all-packaged deliveries from Canada, designed to meet the more uniform requirements of the North American markets, have grown rapidly.
There was considerable discussion about the need to expand the fleet of modern ships designed for the carriage of packaged timber. Experience of newly constructed timber vessels had proved most encouraging and the economies achieved by preslinging cargo, which ensures a much quicker turn-round, indicate that this will in time become common practice.
The recommendations arising from the seminar were later adopted by the European Sawn Softwood Importers/ Exporters Conference.
A parallel project was the conduct in August 1969 of a training centre for the promotion of small size sawmill units and marketing of their products, held at the Kotka School of Woodworking Industries in Finland. This was planned and organized by a special committee appointed by the Foreign Aid Section of the Finnish Foreign Ministry and the State Board of Forestry, under the chairmanship of Dr. Nils Osara, former Director of FAO's Forestry and Forest Industries Division. There were 17 participants from 16 Asian and Far Eastern countries.
An up-to-date directory, Heads of forest administrations of the member countries of FAO is available on application to the Forestry Department, FAO, Rome, Italy.
Louis E. HUGUET has been appointed Director, Operations Office, in the Forestry and Forest Industries Division. He is a French citizen and graduated in forestry in 1947 at the Ecole des eaux et forêts, Nancy, France, in the same year becoming chief of the Forest Service of the French West Indies.
Louis Huguet has been associated with FAO since the early days of the Technical Assistance Programme. In 1951, he was appointed as technical assistance expert and assigned to Mexico to act as forestry adviser for the Banco Nacional de Mexico and for the Nacional Financiere S.A. He remained nine years in Mexico and during that time undertook a number of technical assistance missions to other Latin American countries.
He left FAO in 1960 to resume an assignment with the French Government as the deputy chief of the French National Forest Inventory Service. In 1963, he was again appointed to FAO headquarters to supervise various Special Fund projects. From that post he returned to France in 1965 to become Ingénieur en chef du Génie rural des eaux et forêts and regional director of the Office national des forêts in the south of France.
Since 1961, Mr. Huguet has periodically carried out consultancy missions for FAO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). As consultant to UNDP, he has taken part in the formulation, preparation or evaluation of many UNDP (SF) projects which are now operational.
Mr. Huguet takes the place of Nicholas de Felsovanyi who, on reaching the retirement age for headquarters staff, has been transferred as project manager of a UNDP (SF) project in Yugoslavia for the development of forestry and forest industries in the republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro. Nicholas de Felsovanyi has served with FAO'S Forestry and Forest Industries Division since 1947, and has been associated with, and later in charge of, divisional field operations since technical assistance activities started.
