Logging communities (or agricultural and mining communities in general) gain little when their principal resource is exported unprocessed. In the case of wood, every million board feet of timber harvested in the United States in 1995 supported about 12 jobs in forestry and wood products manufacturing. In some areas, more than two-thirds of these jobs are in primary and secondary processing.(Lumber and pulp, for example, result from primary processing; secondary processing yields furniture, paper and other finished products).
To strengthen their economies, several states have attempted to inhibit the export of raw logs – and processing jobs – by requiring timber cut from state-owned forests be processed within the United States. Idaho has taken the export ban a step further, requiring the primary processing to occur at mills within the state.
