Executive Summary
What the report is about
This report describes the modules and capabilities of the Farm Forestry Toolbox version 5. The Toolbox is a CD-based tool to assist landholders and extension staff to map, measure and manage woodlots and tree yield. The Joint Venture Agroforestry Program (JVAP) funded the expansion of the Farm Forestry Toolbox to include data from a broader range of species and regions of Australia and to update some features. This has extended the Toolbox applicability and availability to more regions of Australia – where plantations are now being grown and managed on private land.

Who is the report targeted at?
This report is targeted at extension staff, farm forestry coordinators, and researchers who wish to use software packages to assist appraisal and presentation of farm forestry related activities to landowners and their advisors. It is also useful background reading for farm foresters who are interested in using the Toolbox, and increasing their own skills at farm forestry project appraisal and management.

Background
Many private landholders, in many regions of Australia, are planting trees for commercial harvest and to improve active management of their land.

However, because the rotation length for most tree species often exceeds 15 to 25 years, many private land owners and growers lack the experience they have developed for their shorter-term crops often harvested on an annual basis.

A decision tool such as the Farm Forestry Toolbox can assist with data handling and analysis, and with assessing management scenarios. Optimising grower returns requires the ability to manipulate and integrate data on the land area, growth rate, management options and log products, and to carry out meaningful financial analysis, taking into account a range of possible scenarios.

Farm foresters have very limited access to either taper or growth models for the wide range of possible eucalypt and conifer species that form the major source of commercial wood products in Australia.

Such models are important in evaluating regional options for species, regime and products, as well as providing analysis of site-specific tree measurement data to aid in silvicultural management.

The Farm Forestry Toolbox is a user-friendly computer package that helps forest growers to better handle a wide range of issues that must be addressed to grow trees successfully. The Toolbox was originally developed for Tasmania, but has had considerable interest from farm foresters and extension staff to expand its relevance to other regions. This project provided that opportunity.

Aims/Objectives
The objectives of this project were to:

• substantially update the Farm Forestry Toolbox through the addition of regional equations and models for plantation species in areas relevant to regions in mainland Australia
• incorporate regional feedback into the Toolbo
• provide training to regional farm forestry extension staff in the use of the updated Toolbo
• demonstrate how the expanded range of tools in the updated Toolbox can help empower farm foresters and technical advisors through user-friendly access to decision making tools

Methods used
The project involved canvassing forestry and research organisations to obtain access to relevant models. These models were then programmed into the user-friendly systems developed in the Toolbox. The specific form and coefficients of the models are “blackboxed” in the Toolbox and not accessible to the user, to protect intellectual property to the satisfaction of the model providers.

However the function of the models is available to Toolbox users.

A number of other features were programmed and added to the Toolbox. These are described in the Results section below.

The project also included delivery of regional workshops to obtain feedback on the Toolbox, and to train regional officers in the use and functions of the Toolbox. The Toolbox is available on CD, with the potential for download of web-based updates in the future.

Results
Through this project, the Farm Forestry Toolbox has been substantially updated. As well as providing simple conversion tools (e.g. common on-farm and tree conversions such as acres to hectares), the Toolbox provides more sophisticated tools that assist the grower to model tree growth and integrate financial and tree products information.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of regional taper and growth models, with a choice of over 40 models relevant to regions in Queensland, NSW, ACT, Victoria and Tasmania. The AGGRO physiological model developed under an earlier JVAP funded project has been added to the Toolbox. AGGRO predicts potential plantation growth rates from user-supplied site data and Toolboxprovided climatic data for Australia’s major plantation regions from West Australia through to Queensland.

There are improved mapping capabilities to allow landowners to easily record and quantify areas that have been planted.

The financial management tool has been substantially improved as cost and revenue analysis can now be analysed on a daily basis instead of only annually as in the previous version. This tool is now suitable for any type of discounted cash flow analysis.

There are enhanced data viewing, importing and exporting capabilities to link with other packages and report formats.

There is extensive on screen Help. Further assistance for users is provided on the CD via a manual and short video clips as well as a Workbook that uses the tools to provide assistance in addressing realistic tasks associated with managing a woodlot on a farm. Both the manual and Workbook can be printed from the CD and are written to provide stand alone help to an untrained Toolbox user.

5,000 copies of the Farm Forestry Toolbox version 5 compact disk have been produced and are being distributed freely to private growers and their advisors through the national network of Private Forest Development Committees (PFDCs) in the main plantation regions of Australia.

The PFDCs have contributed to the project through facilitating regional workshops attended by over 130 people in March 2007. These workshops obtained feedback on Toolbox 5 and provided regional training for a range of users who provide support for private growers in their regions.

Implications for stakeholders
As a result of this project, there is expected to be increased empowerment of regional plantation growers to quantify current tree growing options on their land, and appraise future potential.

The wide range of regionally-specific models in the Toolbox will facilitate a better quantitative understanding and consideration of value-adding options for the integration of plantations with other environmental and social benefits.

Recommendations
Based on the strong positive regional feedback from the workshops, further development of the Toolbox package is recommended. This should be based on consultation with the PFDCs to assist in the identification of priority areas for further development.

There would be little practical benefit in attempting to develop a mega software package that combined aspects of the Toolbox with other related agroforestry software products such as Imagine or AFFFM. However, future programming in all products should aim to make it easier to move information between these different packages.