Annual statistics produced by the Forestry Commission once again highlight Britain's reliance on imported timber.

In 2010 wood products imported into the UK were valued at £6.8 billion and comprised 10 million cubic metres of wood (roughly 80% of requirements), representing an increase of 19% in wood imports from 2009.

Scotland is currently growing more than 50% of the home crop, and the commercial timber industry is worth £1bn annually to the Scottish economy and has 20,000 directly employed jobs.

Buoyed by strong timber prices, Scottish foresters are felling considerably more than they are replanting, making inroads into the trees that were planted in the seventies as a result of generous tax incentives.

The supply of Scottish softwood (conifers) is set to peak in 2017 and thereafter steadily fall to a low point in 2042. That's because conifer planting fell dramatically from a peak of 25,000 hectares (ha) in 1989 to around 5000ha in 1994 and then steadily decreased to about 2700ha in 2010. In the past 10 years Scotland has felled about 70,000ha of conifers, but only replanted 45,000ha.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation's 2009 report on the state of the world's forests suggests that, with world population increasing at around 3% per annum, and with increasing timber use, particularly in rapidly developing countries like China and India, there will be an inevitable rise in demand for wood.

Britain is one of the biggest importers of timber in the world, and with demand rising, many are asking what are we doing to secure supply?

The Scottish Climate Change Bill proposed to increase the forest area in Scotland to around 25% of the land surface by 2050 (from about 17.8% currently), the equivalent of planting approximately 16,000ha every year. That target, as laid out in the Scottish Forestry strategy, became an "aspirational" one and has now been dropped in favour of 100,000ha of woodland creation over the next 10 years.

The cabinet secretary for the environment, Richard Lochhead, bowed to pressure from the farming lobby, who feared the loss of land from agriculture would lead to an intolerable loss of critical mass in the livestock industry and a further weakening of rural communities. Both he and the Scottish Government should have realised from the outset that their targets were unachievable in the current economic climate.

Stuart Goodall, chief executive of ConFor (Confederation of Forest Industries – the industry's lobbying organisation) always believed the 25% target was excessive. He believes that if we are to make up for the lack of planting in recent years and avoid the predicted shortage of timber in 30 years' time, we need to plant 9000ha every year for the next 10 years, in addition to replanting the tree area currently being felled – not dissimilar to the Scottish Government's revised target.

It's not that there isn't enough land suitable for forestry. The James Hutton Institute, formerly the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, has identified about 1.3m ha that may be potentially suitable for forestry without any impact on agriculture – and they go on to say there's a further 28%, about 2.2m ha, that may be suitable given certain environmental constraints.

The problem is convincing private landowners to plant trees.

The first problem to overcome is the various hurdles that beset potential foresters, such as expensive environmental assessments that often go against proposals to plant.

Then there are the environmental conditions attached to a consent to plant, such as planting a proportion with less profitable native, deciduous species, or leaving areas unplanted. Finally, the mechanism for grant aid, the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP) needs to be made much more user-friendly for aspiring foresters.

Dr Andrew Cameron, senior lecturer in the department of forestry at the University of Aberdeen, thinks the funding for any significant expansion of the forest industry will in some way have to involve the tax regime.

"We must have a system where people feel that they're making a genuine commitment and that they are being rewarded in some way", said Dr Cameron.

"If landowners start planting today, they're unlikely to live long enough to see any meaningful return, and this is a key thing. We have to incentivise people, and one way is through reintroducing some form of tax break that means that people are investing in the land.

"While some may baulk at revisiting a system of tax breaks to support forest expansion, after it became a huge political issue in the 1980s, it should be remembered that the world has changed greatly since then.

"There is now a well-established regulatory system to ensure that new areas of forest are of the highest standards of design and environmental protection", he added.