Forestry focus for Fieldays

The Fieldays Forestry Hub, under the theme of ‘Wood – our low-carbon future’, will be a newly organised space at the event. It will cover topics such as wood processing and the sector’s role in mitigating climate change.

The Hub, a collaboration with an advisory group comprising of Te Uru Rākau – New Zealand Forest Service, Forest Growers Levy Trust, Scion, NZ Forest Owners Association, Red Stag, NZ Farm Forestry Association and Future Foresters, recognises that the forestry sector is a major employer in New Zealand employing more than 35,000 people.

“People of all ages and abilities can find great careers in this sector – from planting and managing native forests and looking after the forest environment, to managing people and resources and working with state-of-the-art technology,” says Hub spokesman Alex Wilson. “We’d also like to open people’s minds up to the possibilities of trees in the future, including the likes of bioplastic vine clips, leather shoes tanned with pine bark tannin and biofuel insights.”

Forest Owners Association president Grant Dodson adds that forestry is an excellent land use opportunity for farmers.

“The hub is all about sharing information, so that forestry is better understood and those farmers that want to can be better informed before investing,” he says. “We see integrated land use, with trees on farms, as a real opportunity to increase overall long-term returns for farming, while improving environmental outcomes, especially around climate change.”

New Zealand has approximately 1.7 million hectares of productive forests around the country and is currently the world’s largest exporter of softwood logs. Plans are also afoot, through Te Uru Rākau’s Industry Transformation Plan, to add more value to our forestry sector by processing wood materials in New Zealand, which in turn will create even more career and job opportunities.

National New Zealand Fieldays Society chief executive Peter Nation says this is the first time Fieldays has included something so specific to the forestry and wood-processing sectors.

woodprocessing sectors. “There’s a huge need for workers of all kinds in the sector, so we’re lucky to have these companies and organisations coming together to showcase themselves and how an interest in forestry can quickly become a career.”