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.
He claimed that to meet our international obligations, current policy, supported by both major parties, relies on planting trees to remove CO2 via the ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme). This is short-sighted and leaves the problem for our children to solve.
The PCE (Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment) says that under the current plan, the area required for tree-planting would be over 5 million ha by 2075. That means we would lose all non-tussock sheep and beef land that is not already covered in woody vegetation.
The “really productive land” that Nash does not want to see planted is class 1-4 land, which is predominantly cropping and dairy. Class 5-7 land is hill country, mainly sheep and beef farms.
Nash seeks to justify afforestation of Class 5-7 land by saying: “There’s five million tonnes of silt pouring into Hawke’s Bay every day from erosion.”
We would all like to see less sediment in the Bay, but Nash has his facts wrong. NIWA’s sediment model shows that under pre-human vegetation a bit under six million tonnes per year (not per day) of sediment went into Hawkes Bay. This compares with a bit over eight million tonnes per year today. The main reason we have increased sediment flow out to sea is because we have made physical changes to our landscape.
By creating flood banks and opening river mouths we have stopped the process which deposited sediment on flood plains rather than it being taken out to sea. We are now unable to reverse this without endangering our cities, infrastructure and horticulture.</p?>
Deforestation and the repeated burning that occurred from the mid-1300s onward created bare land and a lot of landslides ( just like recently clear-felled forests do today). These generated sediment at the time, but also filled in valley bottoms and created unstable deposits of soil that will continue to be re-eroded by streams during every large rain event for decades, possibly centuries, to come.
We can seek to slow this process, but these physical change to our landscape cannot be undone, even by planting trees. Improved farming techniques after WWII do not involve repeated burning.
Nash maintains that inappropriate land clearance occurred after the 1980s. In Wairoa, he is wrong. Locally, a lot of pasture was converted to forestry in the 1990s. StatsNZ figures show the area of pasture in Wairoa decreased by a further 12% between 2002 and 2017.
It is worth noting that in the east of both islands, most de-forestation actually occurred prior to pastoral farming. Before the first grazing stock arrived, the HB landscape was mainly fern with some dryer areas, such as Maraekakaho, in native grasses. The only sizable area of bush away from the ranges was around Dannevirke.
Nash’s other justification for planting farmland is that, “Most… is completely uneconomic from a farming perspective”. He is wrong, again!
The Economic Farm Service collects data on farms every year for government. They survey what they call “N.I. Hard hill country”, along with seven other classes of land. Many Wairoa farms fall into this category. It has consistently shown a greater rate of return than other classes on more expensive land. Until the introduction of the ETS distorted the land market, it also outperformed forestry on all but the very worst land.
Nash’s solution to the forestry slash problem is to “support a review of transitioning more land into permanent forestry, as opposed to harvested forest”.
For Wairoa, this will mean not just reducing local employment but almost totally eliminating it. After initial planting, permanent forests produce no jobs in silviculture, logging or further processing.
It is the ETS that is causing sheep farms to be planted in pine. The effects are wider than loss of employment in areas such as Wairoa. Permanent forests will make a few forest owners rich, and yet leave the rest of our population with no export income from our hills and a lower standard of living.
Worldwide it is projected that 1.4 billion people will be protein deficient by 2050. Removing NZ sheep and beef to plant trees will only increase this number.
I am all for fighting global warming, otherwise extremes of weather with increased damage to the land and infrastructure will become increasingly frequent.
However, recent data from the PCE shows no reduced warming from most sectors in NZ. The one exception is the sheep sector. Climate policy should be directed at those sectors that produce the most warming; fossil fuels, followed by dairy.
Instead, policy is eliminating the one sector that has actually reduced warming since 1990. It is the ETS that has to change.
Dave Read and Judy Bogaard have been farming Waiau Station, near Frasertown in northern Hawke’s Bay. The 1213ha property is steep – mainly class six and seven – East Coast hill country.
