This is not about being anti-trees or anti-forestry; the forestry sector plays an important role in New Zealand’s primary industries and there are excellent forestry companies in the South, providing employment and contributing to the country’s export dollar.
On farms, trees provide much-needed shelter and shade for livestock, biodiversity and assist with erosion control. And, of course, trees can help meet New Zealand’s climate change commitments.
Rather, it is about rural New Zealand being converted into a monoculture of pine trees, ironically as a costly war continues to be waged on infestations of wilding pines.
Pastoral properties throughout the country, including the South, are being sold for forestry conversions; many of the recent sales to overseas investors who have been queuing up to obtain their own slice of Kiwiana.
Whether the blocks are being acquired for the purposes of carbon farming, plantation forestry, or permanent forestry is largely irrelevant.
The upshot is productive protein producing pastures are being destocked at a time when the world’s burgeoning population is hungry for high quality food.
Fillet of pine cone anyone?
Every kilogram of protein lost to pine trees has to be replaced somewhere else, most likely produced overseas in a far less efficient and sustainable manner than in New Zealand.
But the issue is also much more than that. The hidden costs are the demise of rural communities, the lifeblood of our critical agricultural export sector.
It is often wrongfully stated that it is only the least productive land which is being converted — which makes sense — but this is not always the case as some of the consents issued under the Overseas Investment Act show.
Just one example is the controversial sale of two adjoining stations in the Gisborne area — the 4912ha Huiarua Station and 1200ha Matanui Station — which both ran sheep and beef breeding operations alongside some existing radiata pine forest.
The properties were bought by Ingka Investments Forest Assets NZ Ltd and Ingka Investments Management NZ Ltd, which are owned by the investment arm of Netherlands-based Ingka Group which has been buying up land in New Zealand.
New Zealand’s Land Use Capability (LUC) system categorises land into eight classes according to its long-term capability to sustain one or more productive uses based on physical limitations and site-specific management needs.
It ranges from class 1 — the most versatile multiple-use land with minimal limitations, to class 8 which has very severe or extreme limitations.
LUC of the above land included 22ha of class 2 land, 290ha of class 3 land and 292ha of class 4 land; all of which were designated as arable land, some suitable for the likes of viticulture, berry fruit and pastoralism.
The new owners said they planned to subdivide and sell about 30ha, including 11 residential dwellings — presumably showing the extent of employment on the property — while another dwelling would be retained for forestry worker accommodation.
They supported the continued operation of a school sited on Huiarua, but one doubts whether that would remain viable given the land-use change.
Fewer jobs mean fewer families in the area, fewer children in schools and less money being spent in towns.
Removal of livestock also has widespread flow-on effects, ultimately affecting all the various service industries that support the rural sector — from transport operators and shearing contractors, to rural service firms and agricultural contractors.
The effects of fire have already been seen in carbon forestry blocks in North Otago. Concerns have also been raised about plantations becoming a habitat for pests, along with worries about other environmental effects, including water quality.
The Overseas Investment (Forestry) Amendment Act 2022 recently came into force, changing the assessment criteria for overseas investments that result in the conversion of farmland to production forestry.
The primary change was applications were now considered under the general benefit to New Zealand test, rather than the more permissive special forestry test, under which land must be used exclusively or nearly exclusively for forestry activities (maintaining, harvesting and /or establishing a crop of trees for the purpose of plantation forestry, but excluding permanent forestry.
From a layperson’s point of view, it is difficult to grasp just how much general benefit there is for New Zealand, aside from the initial flurry of planting activity.
Sympathy is to be felt for those selling their properties. Like any business, they need the best result they can and this issue is causing divisions in rural areas. Some maintain farmers can sell to whoever they like, others are aghast.
The Government last week launched consultation on how forests are managed through the National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry; Environment Minister David Parker and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor acknowledging the increasing concerns about the growth and extent of exotic forestry and its environmental, economic, social and cultural impact on communities, including the conversion of whole farms to exotic forestry.
The review is to ensure the "right forest is planted in the right place, and managed in the right way". Which is, of course, what it should be about.
It is to be hoped that the process moves swiftly and is not weighed down with the wheels of bureaucracy while Rome — or perhaps radiata — continues to burn.
Back in the 1990s, New Zealand’s dairy boom began and continued, relatively unchecked, until the realisation that peak cow had well and truly been reached. By then, the damage had been done.
The same could well happen with forestry, except conversion of land out of trees is a fairly difficult prospect once the realisation dawns that we have reached peak pine.
Who will be pining then?
