ARTICLE AD BOX
“Each year we’re losing tens of thousands of hectares of productive farmland. Where sheep and lambs once grazed, pine trees are taking their place....
Sheep numbers are rapidly plunging with almost a million sheep disappearing every year.
“If that trend continues, we’re not going to have any sheep left in our country within two decades. We’ll just have hills plastered in nothing but pine trees. ...Williams says the number one driver of sheep farming’s collapse is clear: carbon forestry....
“The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is effectively subsidising pine trees to offset fossil fuel emissions, and that’s pushing sheep farmers off the land, never to return....
Between 2017 and 2024, 260,000 hectares of sheep and beef country were swallowed up by pines.
“That’s not because forestry is necessarily a better use of the land, but because Government policy makes it more profitable to plant pine trees than to farm sheep....
“Climate policy is trumping food production. We’re blindly sacrificing rural jobs, local processing infrastructure, and sustainable red meat exports at the altar of carbon offsetting....
~ Federated Farmers meat & wool chair Toby Williams from his press release 'Federated Farmers launches ‘SOS: Save Our Sheep’ Campaign' [hat tip Home Paddock]
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| A stream bed, once with year-round full flow, now rendered dry in summer by pine trees in background |
"Big businesses which emit carbon ... can choose to reduce carbon emissions at source or they can offset those emissions by buying carbon credits.
"The latter is their preference. That has led to the method of planting trees in large quantities, to act as a carbon sink.
"Pine trees are the obvious answer from a speculator’s viewpoint, as they’re quick growing – compared to native trees – and quickly attain a height of five metres.
"Why five metres? ... “[T]o qualify as forest land in the ETS, the trees in the forest must be species that can reach at least 5 metres in height.” That’s double the height of a standard ceiling. ... With native vegetation, some 70 species [are therefore] excluded from carbon sequestering assessments. Examples are the many species of coprosmas, hoheria, manuka, muehlenbecka, the several species of pittosporums and others.... Even grass must have a carbon sequestering value?
"Frequently farmers plant trees out of shelter or environmental or aesthetic motivation. But under 5 metres in height – they don’t count. Under the ETS, farmers are being unfairly lumbered with costly dire consequences. The dice are loaded by the impractical 5 metre height rule. ...
"Pine monocultures are environmentally disastrous with an insatiable thirst for water depleting streams to dry beds, wilding pines spread, loss of bio-diversity and acidic runoff. ...A pine tree is said to use 85 litres of water a day whereas a native tree, dependent on species, uses considerably less. Water from a pine forest with a 'bare' pine needle forest floor has quicker runoff compared to a typical native forest area with shade-loving undergrowth. In a few words, native forest has a higher water retention factor leading to natural, more consistent stream flows.
"Anecdotal evidence points to streams much reduced in flow once monocultures of pines have been established. For example, bach owners and residents in the Marlborough Sounds and the Northbank of Marlborough’s Wairau Valley have observed the same diminished flow in creeks after extensive monocultures of pine forests are established.
"But planting trees is the way to combat climate change ... An Austrian countess snapped up a sheep station near Masterton for carbon farming of conversion to pines. Swedish multinational furniture manufacturer IKEA secured a 5,500 hectare sheep and beef farm in the remote Catlins while German insurance giant Munich Re bought large parcels of land near Gisborne and in Southland. ... [S]ome of New Zealand’s biggest emitters — Air NZ,Contact Energy, Genesis Energy and Z Energy — have formed a company called Dryland Carbon which plans to acquire 20,000 hectares to plant in forests over five years. In 2020 it got approval to plant a permanent pine forest of one million trees south of Gisborne....
"[W]ith carbon prices high, more and more speculative carbon farming is erasing valuable, productive sheep and beef farm lands."
~ Tony Orman from his op-ed 'New Zealand Carbon Farming'
English (US) ·