How the Pandemic Drove up the Cost of Wood Products with USDA’s Jeff Prestemon

Covid-19's impacts stretched far and wide and the wood products industry was not spared either. On this week's show, the USDA Forest Service's--Jeff Prestemon--will discuss the particulars of how the pandemic has impacted the wood products industry. He wrote a research paper on "Covid-19 & Forest Products--Analysis of the Pandemic's Effect on the Forest Product's Sector including Lumber Pricing & Demand, Reduction of Labor." We'll also get Jeff's opinion on how things might shape up going forward.

Jeff is a Project Leader w/ the USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station's Forest Economics & Policy. Jeff's research interests include Understanding human-caused wildfire processes; Quantifying the effects and economic net benefits of wildfire fuel treatments; Understanding processes of illegal activities, including green crimes, occurring in forests; Understanding the national and global impacts of policies and programs to reduce rates of illegal logging and trade in illegally sourced forest products; Nonlinear and linear modeling of forest product market prices and spatial relationships; The economics of forest-based disturbances; & National and global forest product markets and trade modeling.

Jeff's academic experience include: Ph.D. in Forest Economics from U. of Wisconsin-Madison; M.S. in Forest Economics, NC State; & B.S. in Forest Resource Management, Iowa State University.