More forestry conversions a death knell for meat sector
Red meat farmers are warning that wholesale conversion of farms into forestry to achieve climate change targets will be unsustainable for the country.
An Austrian billionaire has been granted consent to purchase an $8m Hill Country farm.
The Overseas Investment Office (OIO) has granted Wolfgang Leitner consent to buy a 800ha property located in Kotemaori, Wairoa and convert it to forestry.
The property known as Ponui Station currently has 714ha being grazed by sheep and beef stock.
Leitner plans to plant a further 640ha of commercial forest.
Ponui Station currently has just 14ha of existing commercial forestry.
The remainder of the land includes 33ha of native bush and 113ha of unplantable land containing boundary and riparian setbacks, ponds and infrastructure.
The Bayleys’ real estate listing of the farm describe it as “clean, healthy country, sought after scale, and opportunity to extend farm capability.”
This isn’t Leitner’s first farm purchase in New Zealand, having been granted consent to buy the $4.5m, 489ha Ngapuke Station in Gisborne in September.
Leitner’s earlier purchase was also granted under the special forestry test.
The winner of the 2025 Hawke’s Bay/Wairarapa Dairy Industry Awards enjoys the variety of work farming offers and the ability to improve each season.
A company growing and processing seaweed with known methane-busting properties at a facility in Bluff is expanding internationally but New Zealand cattle farmers won't be getting the product anytime soon.
Through its new partnership with New Zealand Landcare Trust, Fonterra has committed to funding ten $25,000 grants for wetland restoration in communities across the country.
The chair of the Dairy Environmental Leaders (DEL) says the country's dairy farmers are at the forefront of environmental management.
On the edge of the hot, dry Takapau plains, Norm and Del Atkins have cultivated a small but exceptional herd of 60 Holstein Friesian cows within their mixed breed herd of 360 dairy cows.
The DairyNZ board and management are currently trying to determine whether, and to what degree, their farmer levy payers will support any increase in their levy contributions.
OPINION: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon sometimes can't escape his own corporate instinct for evasion, and in what should have been…
OPINION: Shane 'Matua' Jones, crusader against all things woke, including "woke banks", couldn't have scripted it better when his NZ…