City Forests chief executive Grant Dodson on Monday wrote a statement saying Minister of Agriculture Damien O’Connor would intervene in forestry plantations.
"The simple maths is that at least an extra 70,000 hectares a year on average needs to be planted over the next 30 years," Mr Dodson, who was speaking as vice-president of the Forest Owners Association, said.
"But Damien O’Connor has told the primary production select committee that he will stop this yearly level of planting well short of what is required. If you restrict planting to 40,000 hectares a year, then you are at least 30,000 hectares in carbon deficit."
A Federated Farmers spokesman said it needed to be made clear the minister was talking about intervening only if there was "massive investment and massive [replanting]" of high quality agricultural land.
But Mr Dodson said New Zealand would jeopardise its 2050 carbon zero goal if it did put limits on forestry.
"In 2018, the Productivity Commission set out scenarios for getting to zero carbon.
"They all involved reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They also accepted the need to expand the plantation forestry area to sequester large volumes of carbon
... the commission estimated between 2.1million and 2.8million hectares of planting was necessary to get to zero."
Mr Dodson said some farming groups wanted the Government to restrict forest planting.
"Forestry is productive too.
"The average returns per hectare per year from forestry are well above those from hill country farming."
Furthermore, he said farmers were questioning relying on farm income; droughts, increasing stock and water regulations and overseas governments returning to trade protection tools after Covid-19 were all leading them to consider forestry more.
The Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill was passed into law on Monday.
It allows for a cap to be set on emissions covered by the Emissions Trading Scheme, sets up a mechanism for the Government to auction units and addresses impediments to participation in the scheme by eligible forest owners.
Speaking after Bill passed its third reading last week, Federated Farmers vice-president and forestry spokesman Andrew Hoggard took issue with its incentives for forestry.
"The biggest bone of contention for farmers is the incentive this legislation sends to those who would ramp up the conversion of productive farmland into fenceline to fenceline pines planted, not for wood, but for carbon credits."
He said 70,000 hectares of productive sheep and beef land had been or was in the process of being converted to forestry since last year — a shift for which carbon-related investment had been a "major driver".
"We know from ... the last 12 months of Overseas Investment Office decision summaries that we’re averaging a loss of one to two sheep and beef farms every month to conversion to forestry by foreign investors alone."
Pine forests were being grown to "clip the carbon credit ticket".
"The mostly absentee owners/investors will just plant the trees and close the gate, effectively abandoning the land from ever re-entering productive use."
Farm production and exports would be lost, Mr Hoggard said.
"Farm workers and contractors lose their jobs, families move out, there’s less spending in rural townships, rural school rolls suffer as do sports clubs and all the rest of [the community].
"Instead of big polluters being incentivised to look at new technologies to drive down their fossil-fuel burning for the long term they can take the easier path of stop-gap offsetting."
Beef + Lamb NZ chairman and Gore farmer Andrew Morrison said he did not want a "tit-for-tat" fight with the Forest Owners Association but rather a clear conversation.
"We support a value-add or a productive forestry sector so let’s be quite clear around that."
He said offsetting fossil fuel consumption with tree planting needed to be scrutinised; productive forestry stacked up in some situations but "carbon farming" was different.
He was "really happy" to discuss "[what] high value forestry brings to our economy",
but wanted to "strip out the carbon conversation".
He said research by Beef + Lamb NZ found that for every thousand hectares sheep and beef farming created about 7.5 jobs, whereas in forestry it was more like 2.5 jobs.
— Additional reporting The New Zealand Herald
