Tony Orman
Concern about the sale of productive Marlborough sheep and cattle farms to forest carbon trading speculators was voiced at the monthly meeting of Marlborough Federated Farmers.
Waihopai Valley farmer Richard Dawkins told the meeting of yet another farm in the Waihopai watershed recently being purchased for carbon trading and planted in pines.
“The farm borders onto public lands administered by the Department of Conservation and the spread of wilding pines onto the conservation estate is inevitable,” he says.
“It’s disappointing, following the hard work in removing wilding pines in south Marlborough.”
Wilding pines are a major problem in the Marlborough high country particularly in the Branch and Leatham watersheds, the upper Waihopai, Marlborough Sounds and other areas.
President Scott Adams says it was too easy for carbon trading investors, particularly foreign-based, to buy farms for conversion and speculation.
Ross Beech says Genesis Energy was purchasing land to plant forestry.
“Douglas firs are being planted for carbon and they are prolific seeders spreading wilding pines,” he adds.
Meanwhile, Federated Farmers New Zealand president Andrew Hoggard expressed deep concern at “good, productive farmland being swallowed up by plantation forestry.”
“A large scale rush into plantation forestry may be a case of failing to see the wood for the trees,” he said.
“As a general rule, Federated Farmers is not interested in telling anyone how they should use their land. But there is growing unease - even anger - about the amount of productive farmland being gobbled up by forestry, and the long-term impacts of that trend on rural communities.”
Andrew Hoggard says government policy was a factor in skewing the balance between farm and forestry land.
He cited grants available under the government’s One Billion Trees programme, carbon credit income, as New Zealand looks to offset continued greenhouse gas emissions, and the relatively less stringent criteria overseas buyers must meet when investing in forestry versus farmland.
Changes to the Overseas Investment Office rules at the end of 2017 introduced a new special forestry test providing the “fastest and most straight forward pathway for overseas investors”.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, has argued in his comprehensive farms, forests and fossil fuels report, that managing the long-term problem of emissions with a short-term ‘fix’ of sequestering carbon in trees is risky.
At the Marlborough Federated Farmers meeting, Chris Dawkins says there was a real threat to pastoral production from carbon farming. Carbon trading had inflated land prices towards $13,000/$14,000 per hectare for beef and sheep land in the North Island.
“It’s only worth half of that. Carbon price is now $75 while there are no meaningful incentives to reduce emissions,” he added.
