There is a place in New Zealand for carbon farming — but it is not everywhere.
That is the belief of New Zealand Forest Owners Association president Grant Dodson who said neither he, nor the association, believed productive land in New Zealand — whether in horticulture, sheep and beef or production forestry — should be taken out of the long-term land-use flexibility cycle to go into carbon farming.
Mr Dodson is chief executive of Dunedin-based City Forests which did not do carbon farming and the FOA membership did not include any carbon farming members, he said.
Dairy was New Zealand’s biggest export industry, followed by sheep and beef and then forestry.
By planting pine trees for production forestry, it was merely shifting the category from two to three, he said.
But carbon farming differed; there was a place for carbon farming but that was not on the likes of productive South Otago sheep and beef farms, he said.
Instead, there were many parts of New Zealand that were difficult to access that would be ideal.
The forestry industry had a solid piece of legislation, the National Environmental Standards — Plantation Forestry (NES-PF), which was working well for the vast majority of New Zealand, Mr Dodson said.
He believed the NES-PF should be left alone and there should be a separate NES for carbon farming, as there were no rules at the moment, and he believed there was a need for some spatial controls.
Highly productive sheep and beef farms should not be taken out of the commercial eco-system for 50 to 100 years.
When it came to recent concerns raised by the likes of Beef + Lamb New Zealand about the amount of plantation forestry being planted, Mr Dodson said New Zealand was not "turning into a massive pine forest" — "far from it".
The country’s commercial forestry area peaked in 2003 at about 1.83million ha. Much deforestation happened in the 2000s and that peak figure had not been caught up on, although it might have by the end of this planting season.
Forestry was a productive part of the economy and studies showed a forecast world deficit of wood fibre coming into 2030. Humans need three things to live — food, shelter and energy, he said.
Mr Dodson said the recently launched Kiwi Backing Farmers campaign, led by Beef + Lamb New Zealand and 50 Shades of Green, was climate change responsibility denial and dangerous in the long term for New Zealand’s sheep and beef farmers.
Trees on the hill country were essential to stabilise the land, sequester carbon and provide diversified income to replace collapsed wool returns. New Zealand’s most successful farms incorporated forestry for that reason.
Incorporating productive forestry on to farms was a "win win", he said.
"Farmers can fight climate change, meet their He Waka Eke Noa targets, stabilise land, and receive income from carbon and harvesting," Mr Dodson said.
He sympathised with many of the regulatory concerns which the sheep and beef farmer campaign raised and said farming and forestry had literally and figuratively a lot of common ground.
