The Government made two forward looking announcements last month that are focussed on our long-term economic security. One was protecting highly productive land in the low country, while the other extends all the way to the high country where data shows we are winning the battle with wilding pines.
The new National Policy Statement on Highly Productive Land addresses the long known issue of losing our elite soils to urban sprawl. The policy requires councils to identify, map and manage highly productive land to ensure it’s available for growing vegetables, fruit and other primary production, now and into the future.
It will put in place strong restrictions on the use of highly productive land for new rural lifestyle developments. This is a really important step. The past 20 years has seen about 35,000 hectares of our highly productive land carved up for urban or rural residential development, while 170,000 hectares of this land has been converted to larger lifestyle blocks.
To put that into perspective, Stewart Island is about 175,000 hectares. Since 2000, New Zealand’s population has grown from 3.8 to 5.0 million and along with that we’ve had pressure on housing, all of which has seen us losing the hinterlands of Christchurch, Hamilton, Auckland and more, to subdivision. Of course, we still need to house people, but we also need to feed them.
We just need to make sure subdivision and development is happening on the right land –not the best growing land. I’m very much aware of these pressures around Tasman and Marlborough, and it’s great that this long-standing trend is being addressed. Across the country it means fruit and vegetables will be grown close to where they’re consumed domestically, and the exporting capacity of our growing horticulture sector can be preserved.
In case you didn’t know, this year horticulture provided $6.8 billion of export revenue for New Zealand. On the topic of tackling wilding pines, I recently spoke at the 2022 Wilding Conifers Conference in Blenheim. At the previous conference in 2020, I announced that we were going to front-foot the control of wilding pines in a big way –dedicating $100 million to the effort over four years. With the COVID crisis raging at the time, we saw an opportunity to make this investment through the Jobs For Naturefund.
The progress in two years is inspiring. The National Wilding Conifer Control Programme has treated 1.4 million hectares in two years. The result is 70 percent of known infestations have now been treated at least once. For those who don’t know the significance of this work, wilding pines are a major economic and biodiversity threat.
It was shown that if we did nothing to control them it would cost the economy $5.3 billion over 50 years. And of course, the problem compounds as more trees drop seed. Wildings consume farmland, but also threaten other parts of the economy such as hydro-power. Depending on their density, these weeds can reduce the annual flow of catchments by up to 40 percent –depleting water levels in one of the jewels of our sustainable future: renewable hydroelectricity.
A 2018 Cost Benefit Analysis report showed that if the Programme focussed control efforts on 1.8 million hectares of the most vulnerable landscapes, this could protect 7.25 million hectares from further infestation. Armed with that information we got on the job and I’m very pleased to report that the Programme is on track to exceed this target. The remaining $35 million will be spent over the years three and four. The Programme, and many others under their own steam, are doing an excellent job, and we need to keep working together to maintain all the ground we have gained so far –the battle against this urgent weed threat is far from won.
I thank all involved in the collective battle on wilding pines. The storms have made it a tough spring across the Top of the South. It was great to be able to get out on the motorbike and see the impacts first-hand. As always, rural communities are so good at coming together to support the worst affected. I hope the coming season is a good one for you.
