Digital 'SOS' billboards take farmers' message to the Beehive

Farmer lobby, Federated Farmers is taking the fight for the future of New Zealand sheep farming to the streets of Wellington, with bold digital billboards visible directly from Ministers’ Beehive offices.

The message to politicians is clear and concise: sheep are not the problem - stop planting productive farmland in pine trees for carbon credits.

"We wanted this campaign to be bold and directly in politicians’ faces. That’s the only way we’re going to get their attention," Federated Farmers meat & wool chair Toby Williams says.

"Sheep farming is in crisis. We need the Government to urgently wake up to the impact poor policy is having on our farming families and rural communities.

"Each year we’re losing tens of thousands of hectares of productive farmland.

"Where sheep and lambs once grazed there’s now nothing but pine trees as far as the eye can see."

Between 2017 and 2024, more than 260,000 hectares of productive sheep farming land were plastered in pine trees - never to return to pasture.

In just one generation New Zealand has lost over two-thirds of our national flock, reducing from over 70 million sheep in 1982 to fewer than 25 million sheep today.

"Our national flock is declining by almost a million sheep every year and the number one driver is carbon forestry," Williams says.

"Farms are being converted to forestry because Government policy is screwing the scrum and making it more profitable to plant pine trees than to farm sheep.

"The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is effectively subsidising pine trees to offset fossil fuel emissions, and that’s pushing farming families off the land and destroying rural communities."

New Zealand is the only country in the world that allows 100% carbon offsetting through forestry, with other countries recognising the risk and putting restrictions in place.

Federated Farmers is now calling on the Government to urgently review the ETS and fix the rules to either limit or stop the offsetting of fossil fuel emissions with forestry.

People can sign the petition at www.saveoursheep.nz