Rural Action’s Sustainable Forestry program works with private landowners, government agencies, and non-profit partners to promote the development of sustainable, innovative, and integrated forest management strategies with a focus on the production and marketing of high-value non-timber forest products, or NTFPs.

Our goal is to support landowners interested in exploring economically and ecologically sustainable models of forest production, by providing site visits to inventory species on private land; planting stock sales for forest herbs such as ginseng, goldenseal and ramps; opportunities for peer-to-peer learning in the sustainable timber and NTFP sectors; market support via networking for both buyers and sellers as well as market outlets, such as the Chesterhill Produce Auction; and informational resources, including fact sheets co-authored with The Ohio State University, the Woodland Owners Toolkit, and much more. We aim to provide resources to landowners at any level of production and to help interested landowners move along the production pipeline, by providing the information, resources, and opportunities required to start a forest-based operation, expand it, and bring forest products to market.

By providing resources for woodland owners we have been able to effectively train landowners and partner agencies to identify alternative income opportunities, like forest farming of ginseng and other forest botanicals, as well as how to conduct land restoration projects with native plants, and mitigating the impacts of non-native invasive species that can negatively affect forest health and diversity. The Sustainable Forestry program has joined the Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmer Coalition, a network of forestland owners, universities, and governmental and non-governmental organizations that share a common goal of improving agroforestry production opportunities and farming capabilities among forest farmers.