The Industrial Forestry Operations (IFO) program, part of Virginia Tech's Department of Forestry, began in 1973 as a cooperative effort among the forest industry and forestry equipment manufacturers. Initially, the IFO Cooperative's primary goal was to develop undergraduate and graduate education programs that specifically prepared foresters for careers in industrial forestry, including wood procurement, timber harvesting, industrial forest land management, and forestry operations. The program gained widespread support and acceptance within the forest industry, and today's IFO graduates continue to be highly recruited and many hold high-level management positions within the forest industry.

The basic structure of the IFO Research Co-op is as follows:

• Cooperators contribute a modest annual stipend to provide critical support for ongoing Co-op operations. These funds are primarily used to supplement graduate student assistantships.
• Research projects are typically proposed by IFO faculty and/or one or more Co-op members. Complete project funding can be sought from outside sources as well as Co-op member firms.
• Cooperators, faculty, and graduate students meet annually to review all work and present the results of completed projects. Forestry operations continuing education programs are offered periodically. Quarterly IFO Co-op newsletters focus on project updates and technology transfer information.

Facilities:

The IFO Program maintains the Harvesting Research lab, a 2400 square-foot, fully-equipped machine shop, for fabricating new machine designs and modifications and supporting the skidder, loader, trucks and other equipment used in field research.