By Jennifer Dann
For good reason, local is a big part of MOFGA’s vision: supporting local farming can make us healthier and more resilient as families and communities. Buying locally grown food is a great way for people to support local farming systems. Another great way to support your community and the surrounding landscape is to buy local wood.
Keeping Maine’s forests as forests is a critical strategy in addressing climate change, promoting biodiversity, protecting water, and ensuring public access to recreation, scenery, and wildlife. But today, Maine is losing forestland. Forestland ownership and management patterns are being influenced by complex economic and wood market factors, development pressures, and individual, family, and corporate planning decisions.
When we can buy wood from local sources, we reward landowners for keeping forests as forests, supporting a local system of wood processors and producers, and storing carbon both on the ground and in long-lasting wood products. A strong local wood market has the potential to generate many ecological, community, and economic benefits in the same way that local food markets have. New and visionary market and policy levers focused on the many benefits of local wood market economies have the potential to influence decisions about forestland conversion.
Buying local wood is not as straightforward as it might sound — a surprise for many who assume the most forested state in the nation produces most of the wood products sold here. Wood supply chains are like those of food supply chains. For example, Maine grows lots of russet potatoes. It would make sense that the generous pile of russet potatoes in the grocery store was grown in Maine, and they may be — but you can’t make that assumption. The same is true for a pile of lumber on the rack at the home improvement store. While Maine grows lots of trees and produces lots of lumber, you can’t assume that the lumber came from a Maine forest.
The origin of the russet potato is conveniently labeled (although frustratingly, sometimes as “various”). Unfortunately, there is no equivalent labeling for wood products. To understand why this is the case, it is helpful to understand the process by which a tree is turned into a wood product. Once harvested, trees are sorted by tree species and graded for quality and end use — for example, a large, straight tree might be sorted for long lumber or beams. They are debarked and go through an initial sawing process. The logs are then dried in kilns before going on to a second transformation into a product, be it structural lumber, trim, siding, etc. Lumber destined for building construction goes through an additional grading process. At every step, the byproducts — bark, slabs, sawdust — are typically collected and used in various applications.
Maine’s larger mills and wood processors serve regional markets with two-way wood flows between the New England states, New Brunswick, and Quebec. Once a log enters these regional markets, it is combined with logs from other areas, and its origin is not often clear to the end consumer. Local small mills, processors, and craftspeople serve local markets. Smaller mills are often quite specialized, and in many cases do not have the drying and grading capacity needed for producing grade-stamped lumber, required by national residential and commercial building construction code.
So as consumers, how do we find local wood? The basic approach is the same as searching for local food — know your grower/producer. Buy directly from a sawmill when possible. There are many wood products including rough-sawn boards, posts and beams, shingles, and decking that are all available from custom sawmills. These mills typically buy logs harvested within a short radius of the mill. The Maine Wood Guide, created by Local Wood WORKS, lists many sawmills and wood producers by category.
If you can’t find the wood product you need from local sawmills, buy from locally owned retail lumber stores. These stores tend to have shorter supply chains (many own their own forestlands and sawmills), and the chances are much higher that the wood is from the region. Always ask them if they can source local wood products; the more that local wood is requested, the more the market signal is sent that it’s important. Also ask for wood sourced from forests that are managed using recognized sustainable forestry practices. Local Wood WORKS’ paper, “A Long Term Approach to Forest Management,” provides a good primer on these practices.
When buying wood from retail stores, buy certified wood when possible. Certified wood can be found in large national chains and in some retail lumber yards, and is also produced by smaller-scale forestry operations. The forestry behind this lumber is audited by a third party and the lumber is tracked from stump to retail through a chain of custody. While certified wood is not an indicator of local production, it is a seal of approval for forestry that protects timber stocking levels, water sources, soil health, and wildlife habitats. Look for certification stamps on the face of dimensional lumber or in promotional materials for wood products.
Buying local wood is most likely going to be more complicated than buying local food. And in the case of many wood products, it may be significantly more expensive to buy local. But typical wood consumption needs are less frequent and can usually be planned. Buying local wood is a long-term investment in Maine’s current and future forested landscape. Local sustainably harvested wood accomplishes the same broad ecosystem, health, and economic goals of local organic farming: We can have “farm to table” — and also have the forest provide the table and the home it is in.
Jennifer Dann is the project director for Local Wood WORKS, a collaboration of eight partner organizations including MOFGA, with foundational funding from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation. Local Wood WORKS partners and supporters are committed to sustainable forestry, strong and resilient local economies, conservation of both working woodlands and ecological reserves, reduced energy consumption and transportation costs based on local products, and providing support to landowners, loggers, processors, manufacturers, and consumers. You can find more information about Local Wood WORKS, including the Maine Wood Guide and ‘A Long Term Approach to Forest Management’ at localwoodworks.org.
This article was originally published in the fall 2025 issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener.