Timber REITs Data: Filings Facts, Price History and Forest Inventory · Head-to-head
FAO Forest Product Statistics vs USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart
Which timber reits data: filings facts, price history and forest inventory data fits your job: FAO Forest Product Statistics, or USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
FAO Forest Product Statistics
USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | FAO Forest Product Statistics | USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart |
|---|---|---|
Area Code | Numeric FAO country or territory code. | not in this set |
Area Code (M49) | UN M49 numeric area code, quoted with a leading apostrophe - a spreadsheet-escape artifact preserved verbatim so joins against M49 reference lists behave predictably. | not in this set |
Area | Country, territory or aggregate region name. | not in this set |
Item Code | Numeric identifier of the forest product per the FAO Classification of Forest Products. | not in this set |
Item | Product label - sawnwood, fibreboard, chemical wood pulp, cross-laminated timber (CLT or X-lam), or the Wood, pulp and paper products (export/import) aggregate. | not in this set |
Element Code | Measure identifier: Production (5510/5516), Import quantity (5610/5616), Import value (5622), Export quantity (5910/5916), Export value (5922). | not in this set |
Element | Name of the measure recorded in the row. | not in this set |
Year Code | Internal year key, normally equal to Year. | not in this set |
Year | Reference year of the observation, 1961-2024 in the current release. | not in this set |
Unit | Unit of measure: cubic metres for volume-based products, tonnes for mass-based products, 1000 USD for values. | not in this set |
Value | Observed or estimated quantity or value for the area-item-element-year combination. | not in this set |
Flag | Data-quality flag: A official figure, E estimated value, F forecast value, I value imputed by a receiving agency, X figure supplied by an external organization. | not in this set |
Coverage, side by side
| FAO Forest Product Statistics | USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | ~285 countries and territories plus regional aggregates (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania, World) | All 50 US states plus territories, one file set per state; plot coordinates fuzzed above plot number 40,000 |
| Temporal | Annual, 1961-2024 in the current release | Annual inventory panels; observed collections run from 1984 panels to 2022-2024 cycles, refreshed continuously |
| Granularity | One row per country x product x measure x year | Tree-level and plot-level rows joined by CN keys; population estimates roll up to evaluation units |
What each contains
They tie on 1 attribute. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| FAO Forest Product Statistics | USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) | USDA Forest Service - Forest Inventory and Analysis program |
| Subject lens | Global production and trade of forest products: roundwood, sawnwood, panels, pulp, recovered paper, paper and paperboard | US forest census: land extent, ownership, species, tree volume, biomass, growth, removals and mortality |
| Geography | ~285 countries and territories plus regional aggregates (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania, World) | All 50 US states plus territories, one file set per state; plot coordinates fuzzed above plot number 40,000 |
| Temporal coverage | Annual, 1961-2024 in the current release | Annual inventory panels; observed collections run from 1984 panels to 2022-2024 cycles, refreshed continuously |
| Granularity | One row per country x product x measure x year | Tree-level and plot-level rows joined by CN keys; population estimates roll up to evaluation units |
| Scale | 2,457,869 data rows in the normalized all-data release; 104 item codes, 8 elements | ~59 table types x ~50 states; a single-state TREE file alone reaches 541 MB (Alabama) |
| Documented fields | 13, definitions verified | 24 core fields documented here out of hundreds published per state |
| Best for | Cross-country supply, trade-flow and market-sizing questions | Ground-level US timberland questions: standing volume, site productivity, ownership, stand age |
What each does better
FAO Forest Product Statistics
Every producing country in one methodology. Around 285 countries and territories report through one questionnaire under one classification, so sawnwood output in Germany, Brazil and Japan sits on the same definitions and can be ranked without reconciliation work. Regional aggregates for Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania and World come precomputed. No national forest inventory offers that breadth.
Trade, not just production. Import and export quantities and values ride alongside production as first-class elements, in cubic metres, tonnes or 1000 USD. For timber REITs that means demand-side visibility - which markets absorb the fiber, at what declared value - not just supply-side counts of trees.
USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart
Ground truth at the level of an actual tree. Diameter, height, net and gross cubic-foot volume, board-foot volume, age - per tree, keyed to its plot. The FAO cell says the United States produced a quantity of industrial roundwood in a year; FIA's rows say what is standing in a given Wyoming survey unit right now. When a timberland valuation needs standing volume by species and ownership, there is no substitute.
Valuation inputs FAO never carries. The COND table holds OWNCD and OWNGRPCD ownership codes separating corporate private timberland from federal, state and Native American holdings, plus FORTYPCD forest type, STDAGE stand age, SITECLCD productivity class and SICOND - the site index in feet at base age 50 that separates a high-yielding southern pine tract from a slow northern hardwood stand.
Continuous refresh with visible bookkeeping. States are re-measured on rolling panels, changes are logged (the latest logged change added 2022 soils-laboratory data for multiple states), every row carries creation and modification timestamps, and companion estimation tooling generates population estimates with sampling errors for any evaluation you define. Urban FIA extends the same machinery into city trees as whole-project SQLite bundles.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - they tie on quality at 9/10 apiece, so the question decides, not the scorecard. Reach for FAO Forest Product Statistics when the unit of analysis is a country or a trade flow: sizing global sawnwood or pulp capacity, benchmarking producers against each other, building sixty years of production-and-trade history into a demand model, or quoting figures whose reported-versus-estimated status you can defend. Reach for USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart when the unit of analysis is ground inside the United States: standing volume by species, ownership and site productivity on the tracts your thesis touches, mill-level removals context, or growth-and-mortality dynamics measured rather than estimated.
A practical tell: if your answer would name a country, start with FAO; if it would name a county, a species or an owner class, start with FIA. Cut each sample to the geographies, products and tables you actually model, and let the returned rows make the call rather than the brand names.
Sample both, pick by fit. See FAO Forest Product Statistics · See USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart
Fair questions
Is FAO Forest Product Statistics better than USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart?
Neither is better - they measure different things and tie at 9/10 in Datadory's rubric. FAO Forest Product Statistics covers production and trade for roughly 285 countries and territories annually since 1961; USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart covers US forest inventory at plot and tree level across about 59 table types per state. Sample both, pick by fit.
Which dataset covers more geography?
FAO Forest Product Statistics, by an order of magnitude: around 285 countries and territories plus regional aggregates. USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart covers one country - but all 50 US states plus territories, measured exhaustively at plot level rather than summarized nationally.
Do the two datasets overlap anywhere?
Only at the United States as a whole: FAO carries US production and trade cells per product and year, while FIA holds the underlying American forest inventory. There is no native join - connect them by reconciling calendar years and converting cubic metres against cubic feet when stacking both.
Which one should a timber analyst sample first?
Analysts sizing markets or trade flows should start with FAO Forest Product Statistics; analysts valuing timberland or modeling supply inside the United States should start with USDA Forest Service FIA DataMart, whose ownership codes, site index and per-tree volumes feed valuation directly.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes. Datadory ships either record alone or merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Request a cut scoped to your geographies, products and tables and both arrive as one consistent feed.