pine plantations in northern MN

[WDH]

Wow, that is not bad.  If you received $70 per acre per year as a lease payment and you paid $10 per acre in taxes, and if you had no other ownership expenses, and if you could average 3% interest rate over the 15 year period, then the present value (PV) of that cash flow is $597 per acre.  You could afford to pay $597 per acre for bare land in that case. 

This calculation is very dependent on the interest rate, and that is the $64,000 question.  What will be the average interest rate that you could expect to receive, say if you invested the money in CD's, over the next 15 years?  Right now that rate is about 1%, but it has averaged a good bit more than that in the last 15 years?  What does the Crystal Ball say  .

[jueston]

On the hybid poplar market, the company is paying $70 a acre per year, on a yearly basis for 12 to 15 years, they come in and plant it, and harvest it. u have no worries about  stumpage  price.

this is very interesting to me, allthough it does take a certain amount of joy out of land ownership since i wouldn't be in charge of any of it... could you share the name of this company? or pm it to me?

[barbender]

What company? The only mill I have seen try to use it is Sartell, and I heard it didn't work very well for paper. That stuff is nothing but branches.

[SwampDonkey]

I have a hybrid poplar planted in 1982, if I recall, and it's now over 20" at DBH and 65 feet. They tried the hybrid poplar in Ontario and from what I herd it was a failure. The diseases like hypoxylin and target cankers killed off a lot of them. There is one woodlot owner that tried a few, I have not been to the site for a few years. He told me the deer and moose like poplar. I said I know.