Farming v Forestry - Friend or Foe

Can farmers and foresters be friends?

They certainly don't need to be foes, according to the communications boss at the Forest Owners Association.

"You know the answer to that one. I have been around farming and know and love that industry heaps.  And I know, and I'm quite convinced over it, there is a place for forestry within farming, rather than the other way around, and that is going to be the story for many years to come.

"We are incredibly efficient producers of high-value food. We can also be incredibly efficient producers of high-value wood products. The two are complementary, not incompatible."

In recent times protests about farmland being converted to forestry have gathered pace. Farmers marched recently in Hawke's Bay and rural leaders in Gisborne gathered thousands of signatures on a petition opposing forestry and foreign ownership.  

Farmers and people in small towns say forestry leads to depopulation, there are risks from forest fires and rural roads are wrecked by logging trucks.

If you ask Don Carson about productive sheep and beef stations being sold for commercial forestry conversion he challenges the perception of productive land.

"Yes, there's no question that farmland is productive, but so too is forest land.

"And the returns per hectare from forestry, even without the carbon ... even though you have to wait for a forestry return, on average, per year, the trees are going to earn the owner more than hill country farming, that's well established."

Don also says the overseas investment in New Zealand forestry isn't huge.

Since the rapid forestry test came in in 2018, it has averaged 7000 hectares a year.   

"Seven thousand, sounds a lot but you put that in the context of hill country farmland where there's somewhere between 7 and 10 million hectares."

In recent years, about 25,000 hectares of new production forests have been planted annually.

The total area of plantation forestry measured in 2021 was 1.74 million hectares, 654,000 hectares fewer than 20 years ago.

What is not known is how much land is being planted for carbon forestry - trees that will never be harvested because the owners make enough from the carbon credits alone. Carbon foresters don't have to register under the NES-PF.

He says it's easy to pick on foreign forestry owners because they may have unusual surnames, while it's easy to forget how much foreign ownership there is in the wine, dairy and meat industries.

Don agrees with more forestry the nature of rural communities will change, and people will live in nearby towns rather than out of the farms.

But he argues that communities have been changing for years. Technology has let farms run with fewer labour units, the reduced national sheep flock means fewer shearers are needed.

Forestry, he says, is part of the transition.

"The economics, the social impact and effect, as well as environmental impact are all positive. But there's room for both, we are not going to stop producing food, there is no question about that."

He also argues that land owners should be able to make their own minds up about who they sell to, and not make sheep and beef farming "compulsory".

"If you have land and you want to turn it over to forestry, then your local council is going to tell you 'no you are required to keep farming sheep and beef'. Well that's a ludicrous way to run any democratic society is it not," he says.

Don says he keeps looking at the government's Fit for a Better World plan too.

"It gives $10 billion extra of exports for New Zealand out of the primary sector by 2030, eight years away, a pretty short target and not one you can waffle out of because no one will be around by the time it comes to pass.

"And the significance of the $10 billion is that there were three major sectors in there: horticulture $2.6 billion, aquaculture not far behind, and also forestry, $2.6 billion in extra earnings out of forestry within the next eight years.

"The entire pastoral and arable sector totalled up to $2.6 billion, so the smart money is on the other industries, outside of massive growth of the pastoral sector. That's a pretty significant indication that it's not sheep and beef that will be the economic salvation of New Zealand."