How many newspapers do you get delivered to your home? How many magazines? If you are a typical household, your answer to those questions is likely “none” or “not many.”
A Pew Research study from September found that just 4% of Americans reported that they consume news information via print.
RELATED: Read the Pew Research Study here that shows how dominant digital is for the medium by which Americans get their news.
Marc Brinkmeyer doesn’t need to read the study. He lives it.
“It’s a challenge. It’s a challenge for the industry,” Brinkmeyer told American Farmland Owner.
Brinkmeyer is owner and Chairman of the Board of Idaho Forest Group, a Coeur d’Alene, Idaho-based company that is one of the largest lumber producers in the United States.
Brinkmeyer is nearing five decades in the lumber business and knows that business can grow, stall, or fall from year to year.
These days, timber is not “tim-berrrrrrrrr!” But the industry is feeling the pain of a splinter or two.
In May 2021 as Americans were flush with federal COVID-19 stimulus money and bought new homes or renovated their existing homes, lumber sold for $1,6667 per 1,000 board feet.
(Note: A board foot is the volume of a board that is one foot long, one foot wide, and one inch thick.)
But the price for that lumber has tumbled since. Higher borrowing costs for new homes and reduced housing starts brought down demand, and lumber prices struggled to stay above $500 as 2025 began.
That price brought producers back to what they could get for their lumber seven years ago.
RELATED: Follow the price of lumber over the past 25 years courtesy of this graph from Trading Economics.
Housing starts have fallen by nearly one-third in the past three years. They reached 1,830,000 in April 2022 but have dropped to 1,2900,000.
That demand drop for lumber underscores the importance of finding new uses for more of the timber. “We use between 55 and 65% of the log to make precision rectangles,” Brinkmeyer explained, “which is really what our business is.”
“The rest of it…chips, sawdust, shavings, and bark...the residuals have gone down in value significantly over the last 10 years.”
That is the result of Americans turning to digital rather than paper. “Newsprint plants have closed. And we don't see anything new on the horizon,” Brinkmeyer said.
“We need new opportunities for that fiber.”
LEARN MORE: Marc Brinkmeyer has various interests beyond lumber, protecting the environment, preventing forest fires, and promoting education. He has had a life-long fascination with steam engines. That fascination led him to buy and restore steam engines that he finds across the country.
Nearly a decade ago, he found a 24,000-pound, 75-horsepower Case steam tractor. The nearly 100-year-old tractor had spent most of its working life plowing fields in Montana. Brinkmeyer had the tractor restored to its former glory and put on display at the North Idaho State Fair in 2016.
Marc Brinkmeyer will be a keynote speaker at the 18th Annual Land Investment Expo in Des Moines, Iowa, on January 14th. To see the list of speakers or find out how to attend the Expo either in-person or virtually, visit this website.
American Farmland Owner is a media sponsor of the 18th Annual Land Investment Expo.
