'stumpage' is a correct and usable word in written English.
It is a technical term used in the forestry industry to refer to the value of standing trees on a given parcel of land. It is typically used when discussing the sale or harvesting of timber. Example: The logging company negotiated a fair price for the stumpage on the private land they planned to clear for a new development.
Dan Evans, manager of log exports for British Columbia's government, points out that stumpage fees cover only a small portion of what it costs a Canadian company to send lumber across the border.
In Canada, provincial governments own the timber, set harvest levels, restrict the export of raw logs and set stumpage rates (or cutting fees) according to market conditions.
These would double auctions of public timber (to at least 13% of the total cut), and base stumpage rates on those auctions.
On a flying visit in late February, he flagged up a C$220m $$194m) package to subsidise road building and to lower the stumpage fees charged by the province for felling trees.
He called for the provinces to eliminate any rules that "insulate lumber producers from the market" and to use timber auctions to set stumpage fees.
"They've hired their experts, and we've hired ours," says John Allan, president of the British Columbia Lumber Trade Council.In Canada the provincial governments own forests, and each province is given considerable freedom in pricing its "stumpage", as standing trees are oddly called.
It is worth noting that for years American companies were themselves accused of receiving subsidies; stumpage prices for trees cut down on federal land were long criticised as too low.
Governments set harvest levels, restrict the export of raw logs and set stumpage rates (or cutting fees) according to market conditions.The American lumber lobby instinctively suspects that a system where government has such a big role must involve subsidies.
No price estimate was given, but the average so-called stumpage price for similar saw timber can run about $100 per 1,000 board feet.
"I know what you have to pay for stumpage".
The Bush administration imposed the tariffs mainly to offset the benefits of what it says are subsidies to Canadian sawmills, in the form of low "stumpage" fees paid to cut down trees in government-owned forests.
