If you use that definition, then I'm comfortable with being called a farmer. By intensively farming the land we do farm, we make other lands available for other uses - including wilderness uses. I'm proud of that. I think it's the right thing to do. Tree farms cover one out of every seven acres of South Carolina - and more are planted every day.
Timber is the state's top crop.
The struggle between tree farmers and advocates of natural forests is often misunderstood. The 182 million acres of Southern forest differs from the embattled forest of the Pacific Northwest. Here, there are no ancient forests to save. Here, trees are planted faster than they are cut. And here neither the industry, the environmentalists nor the government controls the forest.