Artisanal millers access new equipment for training and lumber processing

The Forestry Commission Training Center (FCTC) has installed a modern wood processing equipment to support the training and operations of artisanal millers.

The LT 40 Wood Mizer, purchased at a cost of 200 thousand Ghana Cedis, is supported by the EU-funded chainsaw project on ‘Securing the integration of legal and legitimate domestic timber markets into Voluntary Partnership Agreement’.

The project is implemented by Tropenbos International (TBI) Ghana and partners.

TBI Programmes Director, Samuel Kwabena Nketiah, says the machine is to help upscale the training of artisanal millers who want to supply legal lumber to the domestic market.

The goal, he says, is to curtail the illegalities and conflicts associated with chainsaw milling, whilst addressing livelihood issues.

“With this machine and the whole concept, we have managed to get a replacement for illegal chainsaw milling. The other side of the project also looked at alternative livelihoods because we realized that to stop people from their livelihood activities, without giving them a substitute, will serve no purpose,” said Mr. Nketiah.

Through a series of multi-stakeholder discussions under the EU Chainsaw project, artisanal milling has been accepted as an alternative to illegal chainsaw milling for supplying legal timber for the domestic market.

The small-medium scale milling of timber from specified legal sources is capable of recovering at least 50percent of dimension lumber from logs for the domestic market only.

Director of the FCTC, Joseph Boakye, says the installed equipment would be beneficial in the training of former chainsaw operators who want to formalize to legal artisanal milling.

“We will also be interested in assisting members of DOLTA – Domestic Lumber Traders Association – who can purchase their own logs and we’ll process it for them… and those who have their own plantations, if they harvest, can bring it here and we’ll process if for them and charge reasonable prices,” he added.

The piloting of artisanal milling started in 2012 and the concept to help institute and make it operational was finalized in 2014.

The capacity of potential millers were built in the areas of group dynamics and leadership, the techniques of timber milling and business management and marketing.

Five artisanal groups in the Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, Western and Eastern regions have been linked with forest concession holders for legal timber to feed their mills and are producing for the domestic market.

Alexander Amoako Boadu, Director of Operations at the Forestry Services Division of the Forestry Commission, says any means to train chainsaw operators to formalize their activities is critical to deal with the challenge of illegal tree felling.

“But the bigger picture lies with the communities that we’d expect to assist us in protecting the forest because stay very close to the forests and they see those who come in and go out,” he noted.

More artisan millers are expected to be trained to join the pilot process after which the project will be institutionalized as a major means of feeding the local markets with legal lumber in the light of Ghana’s VPA implementation.

But to achieve holistic outcomes, challenges would have to be addressed in the areas of access to raw materials, elite capture of artisanal milling, abuse of system, corruption and dwindling timber resources.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Ghana issues first ever license for artisanal milling to millers

Richard Agyenim Boateng could not hide his excitement after he had been issued with the first ever license for artisanal milling at a brief event in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.

“I am relieved to have a license, I will not fear working on my mill any longer and I will have access to legal timber,” he exclaimed.

The Timber Industry Development Division (TIDD) of the Forestry Commission (FC) issued the license under the EU Chainsaw Project being implemented by Tropenbos International (TBI) Ghana and its partners.

This forms part of government strategy to promote the sustainable use of forest resources under the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) by supplying the domestic market with legal timber in order to curb rapid deforestation.

The issuance of the license is a landmark victory in the country’s efforts to quell illegal felling of trees and chainsaw milling which is associated with a high percentage of wood waste.

“I now have the courage to approach any member of the Ghana Timber Association (GTA) for wood to carry out my job,” said Mr. Agyenim, who manages RABMILL Enterprise located in the Goaso Forest District of the Brong Ahafo Region.

He has incorporated eight other millers into his business, who would soon be issued with certificates whilst machinery for his work has already been inspected by forestry officials.

Like all other millers in Ghana, Mr. Agyenim who describes himself as a ‘Saw Doctor”, or a professional miller, started his trade as a chainsaw miller in 1991 but was soon put off by the huge wastage associated with chainsaw milling which underutilised large parts of the tree and decided to develop his own machine.

“I realised even before chainsaw milling was banned in Ghana in 1998 that if I did not change to a more efficient system, I would be doomed. So, in 2008, I developed my own machine, the RABMILL (Richard Agyenim Boateng Mill), which was named after me and proved to be high yielding, with a 67 percent recovery rate as compared to 32 percent from the chainsaw,” he stated.

Mr. Agyenim later invented a second mill, the Mobile Dimension, which also has a 50 percent recovery rate. Other millers, who were impressed with the efficiency of his machines, approached him and he made six Mobile Dimension mills and two RABMILLS for them.

He has advised other millers to “stop using chainsaws and wasting our trees; we have to manage our forests well because our trees can get finished and we would have nothing to live on or bequeath to our children.”

A study conducted by the Forestry Commission (FC) in 2011 puts Ghana’s deforestation rate at a staggering 45,000 hectares per annum in the Savannah Zone and 20,000 hectares per annum in the forest Zone.

Artisanal milling was endorsed as the best alternative to chainsaw milling in Ghana after several consultations with various stakeholders in the forestry industry under an EU project that sought to identify the best way to provide the domestic market with legal timber.

Finding the means for such an endeavour is crucial to the promotion of sustainable forestry development if one considers the fact that a whopping 80 percent of timber supplied on the country’s domestic market can still be traced to illegal chainsaw milling.

Mr. Agyenim recalled that at Jamasi in the Ashanti Region where he grew up, there used to be a scarp that was forested but is now grassland because all the trees have been felled.

He noted the constitution governing the activities of artisanal millers demands that they establish tree plantations and he has plans to start one soon.

The artisanal miller has called on his fellow millers to endeavour to pay taxes levied on their trade, saying there was the need to eschew corruption from all levels of stakeholders involved in the forestry industry in order to make sustainable forestry development a reality. 

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

Ghana's domestic lumber supply boosted with partnership scheme

Ghana is piloting an artisanal milling concept to increase domestic lumber supplies, combat illegal logging and promote sustainable forest management.

Tropenbos International Ghana is collaborating with its partners to build partnerships between artisanal milling groups and forest concession holders.

An initial agreement has been signed between millers in Sankore and Akrodie and a sawmill company, Logs and Lumber Limited (LLL) for supply of logs harvested in the Goaso Forest Reserve in the Brong Ahafo Region.

The Asunafo North Municipal Artisanal Millers Association is enthused at the initiative.

“Getting the resource – the wood – to mill is a problem; you either have to steal or not use the appropriate channel… so it is a very good opportunity for us to get the resource, sawn and fill the domestic market “, stated Richard Agyenim Boateng, Secretary to the Association.

About 84 percent of local lumber supply is from chainsaw milling, an illegal activity that contributes to the loss of $18million in stumpage revenue to stakeholders.

But whilst saw millers focus on the export markets, chainsaw operators serve domestic lumber and employs about 130,000 people.

 

Ghana’s new domestic lumber supply policy is aimed at addressing the unmet local demand for lumber, in line with the country’s commitments under the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPN) with the European Union.

Artisanal milling is therefore an important component of a national policy to discourage illegal chains activities.

According to Samuel Kwabena Nketiah, Programmes Director at Tropenbos, the supply of timber resources to artisanal millers is a major step in sanitizing the forestry sector.

He observed a high number of chainsaw operators are willing to transform to artisanal milling.

Six groups have so far been legally registered for artisanal milling with about 640 chainsaw operators in 13 pilot communities reached with an intervention under the European Commission’s programme on tropical forests and other forests in developing countries.

The successful pilot of the LLL-artisanal millers’ agreement will inform the upscale of the initiative, said Mr. Nketiah.

 

However, high cost of artisanal milling equipment is a major challenge to the artisans.

The Timber Industry Development Division (TIDD) of the Forestry Commission has donated two portable bandsaw mills to support the initiative.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh