Forest Products & Agriculture

Forest Products & Agriculture

Forest products and agriculture are both grounded in a very solid base of knowledge and skills backed by extensive research facilities centered at the University of Maine. Since these sectors have been embedded in the Maine economy for so long and have achieved significant scale of operations, both forest products and agriculture contain a number of clusters that have shown they are sustainable over time.

Though still facing mature and highly competitive markets, there are opportunities for innovation opening in each subsector that may provide new chances for growth. Some of these opportunities are variations on traditional product lines, such as the increasing market for specialized food products for niche markets, for example, gourmet foods. Others are at the cutting edge of biotechnology as in biofuels and bioplastics, which will require significant growth in Maine’s research capacities.