The forest products are the forest goods which depend on the forest resources and serve the humanity after undergoing certain processing. It plays an important role in people’s daily life, with a close concern to the clothing, food, shelter and transportation of people. For example, the furniture, paper, construction, decoration and transport packaging are all the forest products which are processed relying on the raw materials provided by forest resources

Since the forest products depend on the stocking and nursing of the forest resources, and the geographical and climatic conditions, as well as the policies for forest cutting and nursing, defer from one country to another, also the consumption level of the forest products varies in the world countries, the distribution of the consumption of forest resources in the continents of the world is unbalanced, which results in the trading of forest products taking a large proportion in the global trading.

North America and Europe are the areas which are abundant in the forest resource reserves, and also the area where the production and consumption of forest products are concentrated and the trading of forest products is active as well. Table 11-7 shows the data of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2000 about the output, trading and consumption of forest products. The production of industrial logs in the world was 1,587,715,000 cubic meters in 2000, and the output in North America and Europe took up 38.7 and 30.2 percent of the world’s total respectively. The output of logs in the United States and Canada took up 97.8 percent of the total output in North America, while the exports of industrial logs in these two countries occupied 99.6 percent of the total exports in North America, and they were the biggest producers and exporters of logs. The total output of lumber in the world was 390,918, 000 cubic meters, the outputs of which in North America and Europe accounted for 71.6 percent alone. The total production of the wood-based panels in the world was 195,359,000 cubic meters, the productions of which in Europe and North America made up 61.8 percent. The total yield of pulp in the world was 184,715,000 t, and the yields in North America and Europe took up 68.1 percent of it. North America was the net exporter of pulp, and the export of pulp in Canada alone accounted for 67.8 percent of that in North America.