The only valid reason for the state to invest in forest growing is to provide or protect social benefits which are considered important but which would not otherwise be adequately or fairly supplied through private forestry. Such multiple objectives can be met by exploiting the joint production possibilities of forest growth, but the returns are a complex mixture of quantifiable, partly quantifiable and unquantifiable values. One of the quantifiable outputs is wood, and the returns from it can be measured in financial terms. But in growing forests for social purposes wood is really a by-product or a means of achieving certain social purposes. Attempts therefore to assess the adequacy of the returns to the state as a forest grower in terms of the revenue from timber growing are of doubtful logic and so fraught with difficulties, as to be not worth the effort. Concern would be more usefully directed toward the costs of producing the multiple returns of state forestry.
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