It isn’t splashed across the headlines, and you won’t see ‘breaking news’ banners scrolling across your television. But in the piney woods of Georgia and across the Southeast, a slow-burning crisis is hollowing out the backbone of rural communities. It is the quiet shuttering of pulpwood mills—the processing plants that turn timber into paper, packaging, and fiber products—and it is proving calamitous for thousands of working families.
“In the last 36 months alone, no fewer than 63 mills have closed across the Southeast,” said Georgia state Sen. Russ Goodman, R-Cogdell, who knows an thing or two about Georgia’s agribusiness as chairman of the Senate Agricultural and Consumer Affairs Committee. And it is an existential threat to rural communities.
Georgia, the nation’s number one forestry state, has been hit particularly hard. Goodman points out that “Just the recent four mill closure announcements that have taken place in Georgia over the last few months account for over 400,000 semi loads a year that will no longer be delivered.”
Think about that.
Every load was once the product of a chain of labor: the logger who cut it, the trucker who hauled it, the mechanic who serviced the rig, the forester who marked the timber stand, the clerk who processed the ticket at the mill gate. Those four closures alone erase not just mill jobs, but the web of ancillary jobs that supported them. And behind those numbers are families, mortgages, and communities.
As Goodman put it, “The loss of the mill jobs coupled with all the ancillary jobs associated with getting those loads delivered to the mills are pretty staggering. Not to mention all the private landowners who have lost market access for their wood products.”
The reasons for this wave of closures are as complicated as global trade itself. Paper demand has shifted dramatically in the digital age; fewer newspapers and magazines mean less consumption of traditional pulp products. At the same time, competition from overseas producers—some of whom enjoy cheaper labor, looser regulations, or even government subsidies—has made it harder for U.S. mills to compete.
Energy costs, labor shortages, and aging infrastructure compound the problem. Many mills built in the mid-20th century now require tens of millions in upgrades to remain competitive. Meanwhile, consumer habits are changing. Cardboard packaging is booming thanks to commerce, but certain grades of pulp once used in printing simply have no buyers left.
Georgia’s forestry industry employs more than 144,000 Georgians. It pumps billions into the state’s economy every year. When that industry weakens, small towns feel it first and hardest. Schools lose families. Main Street businesses lose customers. Counties lose tax revenue. And young people, seeing no future in forestry, pack up and leave for Atlanta or beyond.
“We have reached a tipping point with an issue that threatens the health of rural economies all over our state and region,” Goodman warned.
But the senator is not sitting still. “I’m working with all my colleagues in the legislature, the Georgia Forestry Association, our federal partners and other state leaders as well as our research institutions to find any and all opportunities to create new markets, new trade opportunities and new uses for Georgia grown timber and wood fiber,” he said.
Goodman has even called for federal leadership. “It’s my hope that President Trump will…bring in all the CEOs of the major timber, pulp, paper and fiber companies, get them all around the table and seek solutions to this crisis …He’s done it before with CEOs from other sectors of the economy and it’s definitely warranted at this point for the forestry industry.”
Goodman believes “it’s an ‘all hands-on deck’ moment.”
“The future health, wealth and prosperity of rural Georgia is on the line and no stone is being left unturned,” he said.
And there is hope. Georgia has the leadership, resources, the workforce, and the will to adapt. The pulpwood crisis may be quiet. But for the families living it, for the communities watching their lifeblood drain away, it is nothing short of calamitous.
The time to act is not someday. It is now.
Gary Wisenbaker is a past chairman of the Georgia Young Republicans, the Chatham County (Savannah) GOP and a former Commissioner on the Georgia Student Finance commission
