This post was prompted by a recent rather intemperate article that appeared in the press by the Chief Executive of Confor. Though the whole article is probably worthy of analysis in a separate blog post (discussing the current tensions around woodland expansion), it was the specific reference to jobs in rural communities that caught my eye.

The implication was that such communities ‘needed’ outside companies to come in and provide jobs (rather than it being possible for communities to develop their own, given the chance). Experience of community woodland buyouts such as Kilfinan, Mull and Tormore in Skye suggest that given access to the resource, communities are more than capable of developing employment themselves.

Then many of the locations of processing plants highlighted in the article – Inverness and Stirling for example – were, from the rural Highland perspective that I write, far from rural and it is clear that what used to be called ‘rural development forestry’ and was (briefly) in vogue a few years ago means different things to different people.

The article also didn’t mention that despite the promise of jobs, employment in the forest industry has fallen in recent years, as highlighted in the ‘Roots for Future Growth’ report published by the Scottish Forest & Timber Technologies Group (page 23). This goes on to explain that this is the result of investment in in “highly efficient, automated machinery and processing lines”.

Which brings me to the theme of this post: what do we mean by efficiency?

In the physical sciences, depending on the context, there are various definitions of efficiency, broadly speaking variations of output/input, and they have the beauty of being very specific. In contrast, efficiency in the world of human affairs is much more complicated, and open to debate.

Take the statement above regarding ‘efficient, automated machinery’ which has had the effect of reducing the jobs required. This would be considered to be a good thing by most people. On the other hand, if your job has been replaced by a machine you may feel differently.

Equally, not all the jobs ‘saved’ by the new machinery disappear. Somewhere else other people may have new jobs making the new machinery, and if these are located in foreign machine shops, again, this may not be a benefit to your community.

Finally, the efficiency of a process is far more than just the efficiency of its final step. So you may have the most sophisticated sawmill in the world, but having to supply it through thousands of lengthy lorry movements of round timber rather takes the gloss off this ‘efficiency’. We should take a holistic view of efficiency over the whole process before coming to our conclusions.

All of which is to suggest efficiency is a complicated thing, and partly depends on your perspective.

So the average woodland crofter, working his woodlands with tractor-based equipment, processing small batches on site with a small sawmill, perhaps adding value manually with a planer/moulder would be considered by some to be grossly inefficient.

On the other hand, to offset the ‘inefficiency’ of his methods & equipment, timber miles are minimised, what he does export is finished product,  he sustains a family and a home in a rural community, and his management approach yields local, silvicultural and biodiversity benefits. These potential benefits are recognised by the Scottish Government, who support woodland crofts as a result.

Footnote: the title of this post is a quote from a friend who runs a sawmill as a social enterprise, and explains to visitors to her business that industry does not take them seriously as their ‘jobs to logs’ ratio is much too high (and therefore ‘inefficient’) –  but their goal is to support as many jobs as they can ‘per log’. This is the opposite approach to conventional enterprises who seek minimise ‘jobs per log’.