DIGITALNA ARHIVA ŠUMARSKOG LISTA
prilagođeno pretraživanje po punom tekstu




ŠUMARSKI LIST 9-10/2018 str. 56     <-- 56 -->        PDF

contractors, therefore, to even a greater reduction of their ability to access the wood. Then, the timber skidding predominates in such conditions as our results on the share of harvesting systems were similar to that reported by Sbera (2007), who indicated that, in Romania, more than 95% of the operational cases are handled using skidders and agricultural tractors fitted for forest operations. Cable yarding systems are less available, therefore used to a less extent in the region (less than 1% of the analyzed contracts in this study). To this end, improvement of operations should be undertaken by finding ways to switch the contractor’s beliefs and technology to an environmentally-sound one. This would be in line with the very long extraction distances and with the slope within the area which reached, in average, 23.5° (43%). Nevertheless, technology switching to cable-yarding without any subsidies or incentives coming from the state is rather difficult to make by the contractors due to purchasing costs that are still too high for them while their investment capability is limited and further affected by the wood selling market and conditions in which they are required to operate.
Previous research has shown that the contract rates are only partially affected by the technical constraints in alpine harvesting operations (Spinelli et al. 2015). While this study did not include the harvesting costs for obvious reasons (e.g. most of the contractors are small companies that do not keep detailed records on their costs), it pointed out that most of the harvesting technical factors taken into study were significant in predicting the tendering prices, at least for the initial and final tendering price. However, the predictive capacity of the developed models was rather low (e.g. adj. R2 = 0.20 for ITP and adj. R2 = 0.17 for FTP), indicating that only a small part of the wood selling prices is explained by the technical factors characterizing harvesting operations. In addition, the price difference was difficult to accurately predict, probably due to other mechanisms underlying the contractors’ willingness to pay more in the auction process. We acknowledge that such small determination coefficients as they were observed in this study, may result in a low predictive capacity of the models and therefore their reporting could be interpreted as inadequate. For instance, Lindroos and Cavalli (2016) pointed out that in time and motion studies such low predictive capacities should be treated carefully. However, the price-setting and wood selling mechanisms are more complex compared to the behavior of other harvesting systems, often including the effect of non-harvesting factors (Spinelli et al. 2015) and of the subjective perception of the contractors competing for resources. To this end, it is possible for contract negotiating approaches to increase the objectivism therefore to better relate the rates to harvesting conditions. But in order to do that a change in the wood selling process is required and this is rather difficult to achieve for the moment. Conversely, the harvesting contractors should keep detailed records on their costs and the applied science should support them in their attempt to objectively evaluate their costs.
This is even more important as the highly non-homogeneous harvesting conditions make the description of the wood market extremely difficult. The normal demand and supply curves cannot be drawn and described, influencing factors being either not known or impossible to assess based on the available data. Therefore, the graphs shown in Figs. 3 and 5 should be assessed in conjunction. The fact that the negotiated volume did not decrease despite of the increased volume on the market and increased auction price is rather confusing. Previous studies pointed out that there may be some explanations for this: increased demand for timber for both species, increased harvesting capacity in an unsatisfied market, increased accessed processing capacity, etc. (Nichiforel & Turcu 2015). Further studies are to clarify this aspect under specific conditions in Romania.
Of course, the demand is highly influenced by the auction price and we could not assess that influence in the absence of data regarding quantities of wood that were offered and not sold. The fact that there are prices that nobody can negotiate under is also an important distortion factor which makes stumpage market prices assessment based on transactions analysis almost impossible. The fact that the auction prices are rising constantly can be seen as a consequence of the stumpage market evolution in limited resources conditions but, under Romanian conditions, there is a hidden danger to have an incomplete market evolution image when the prices, based on the specific regulation, can only go up. This may have been the cause of important stumpage market boycott in winter 2016 when almost all the conifer quantities on the market were refused by allied harvesting companies in the most important region for these species. Therefore, the NFA auction prices calculation process should be more market based and less costs based, this facilitating the real and transparent competition in the stumpage market. For obvious reasons, one of the options for having proper stumpage market price estimation would be to allow the negotiation process to end also with lower prices than the auction prices.
Acknowledgements
Zahvala
The authors would like to thank the National Forest Administration - RNP Romsilva, Baia Mare Branch for their support in data collection. This study was supported by the Department of Forest Engineering, Forest Management Planning and Terrestrial Measurements of the Faculty of Silviculture and Forest Engineering, Transilvania University of Braşov and by the PhD School of the Transilvania University of Braşov.