Production cost and profit of chipped wood from poplar short rotation

The practice of growing trees on short-rotations to produce lingo-cellulosic feedstock for the pulp, board and energy industries is known by a variety of names, including Short-Rotation Forestry (SRF) and Short-Rotation Coppice (SRC) in the UK. The diffusion of energy crops, and more specifically, of those pluriannual and arboreus still depends strongly not only on considerations of environmental sustainability and energy balance but also on their economic results. One cannot think that farmers plant this culture in them estates without a congruous profit perspective, that depends largely on public grants, in addition a yield, crop management, field operation mechanization. Is SRF a mean to provide a future livelihood for farmers? How could farmers know if SRF is a good solution for their farms? Are SRF able to compete with conventional agricultural crops? This paper draws the results (production cost and profit) obtained by a model set up with the specific purpose to calculate analytically economic performance of biomass poplar in Po Valley farms.