Dear editor,
I worked for Beef + Lamb New Zealand for approximately eight years as sector capability and Maori agribusiness manager.
I come from New Zealand’s central north island where production forestry is dominant but farming and horticulture are also important.
I am a director on several Maori land blocks (indigenous title lands) and three of these are farms. Each of these farms also contains areas of both natural and production forests.
In all three cases we are increasing our forested area as a percentage of the total land area. This is a national trend based on the business decisions of land managers and governors to do what is best for the land, the environment and the financial bottom line.
In a past role in corporate forestry, I was the manager responsible for developing the world famous rotorua mountain bike trails in Whaka forest.
Whaka is a 4,000ha forest that is 90% exotic plantation canopy species with thick healthy native regeneration pushing through underneath (nurse-cropping transition forestry).
I have spent my life working in primary sector land use roles that have mostly related to my Maori people, the indigenous people of New Zealand. My mother is Maori and my father is Scottish.
NZ forestry
Unlike many of the other farming dominant countries in the world (who farm on semi-natural prairies, sparse cover lands etc.), New Zealand was until recently almost entirely covered in thick forests.
Colonisation resulted in rapid burning and felling of our forests to make way for farms in the main. The forest dweller way of life of the Maori was largely destroyed in the process.
Today, 70% of our forests are gone, and the statistic is even higher when lowland and wetland forests are considered. Approximately 90% gone.
Our native forests are extremely slow growing. Trying to re-establish them at scale in their original natural form and composition is unproven and likely to be impossible in my opinion.
This does not discount the value and importance of dedicated native planting projects, but current knowledge and technology means this is limited to small-scale niche projects, likely to be less than 100ha and very costly to implement.
Introduced fast growth species like radiata pine, eucalyptus and cedars are the only way we can reforest quickly and efficiently.
These introduced species create a relatively quick canopy for the establishment of natural forest as a second generation understory. This is the best way to replant native trees by the way.
Environment
Farms cover about 12 million hectares in New Zealand, close to half the land area. Planted forest covers only a tiny fraction of New Zealand’s land area by comparison.
We have a significant waterway pollution problem here, due almost entirely to agriculture, Flooding and erosion are worse on farmland than plantation forests land cover.
Employment and profitability from farming is far less when compared to production forestry for timber, on the proviso that timber forestry reaches a scale threshold region by region.
We also have the benefit in NZ of using fast growing exotic trees to sequester greenhouse gases.
You will note that we have one of the worst methane outputs of any country in the world per hectare of land, and this is because of the high percentage of land conversion from thick natural forest cover to pasture for cattle and sheep.
Finally, it is important to note that approximately 60% of sheep and beef farms in New Zealand have planted forests on their properties, and that many farmers are opting to increase their forest area for timber, carbon sequestration, land stability and environmental improvement.
This trend was apparent long before carbon credits came into the mix. To give you a perspective, the earnings per hectare bell curve for NZ sheep and beef farms has most farms under 300 dollars per hectare per year clear.
By comparison, trees for timber alone is around four times that level of earnings.
It should also be noted that many farmers are undertaking grazing within innovative forested paddocks and getting the best of both worlds.
The doom and gloom suggestion from the research report referenced in your recent news article, that trees are destroying the rural way of life is completely incorrect.
Farmers
Finally, NZ is a free democracy where landowners are able to determine themselves what activities they will undertake on their lands.
If they want to move from low earning, high pollution land uses, to high performing forests, or any other form of land use, or combination uses, then they have every right to do so.
Your previous article on this only serves to create unnecessary hysteria and preserve the lifestyle of the few who own vast areas of lands, that earn so very little, they can only support one small family unit typically.
New Zealand needs to afforest as quickly as it can, to turn around our weak overseas earnings, improve our environmental and ecological performance, cleverly support native plants and birds, create more jobs and vacuum up our disastrous greenhouse gas emissions.
From a Maori point of view, “any tree, any place” is better than 12 million hectares of destroyed forests now covered in introduced grasses.
We are a forest land, a forest people, that is our history, our heritage and our future.
kia ora
From Doug Macredie, Nga Pou a Tane – Maori Forestry Association – environmental lead
