A round of applause is a hard-won thing here in the Gore District, but the crowd certainly showed their appreciation of the government’s latest actions around farm to carbon forestry conversions.
Among other changes, we have placed a moratorium on exotic carbon forestry registrations for category 1-5 farmland, and put an annual registration cap for exotic carbon forestry on category 6 farmland.
These measures help to protect our most productive farmland while allowing room for sustainable forestry growth. Landowners will retain the ability to make smart land use decisions, enhancing both profitability and environmental outcomes.
These changes deliver on a key election commitment to protect food production for farmers while providing ETS certainty for foresters.
They also address the previous government’s failed ETS policies that incentivised large-scale conversions, created ETS complexity and undermined our world-best primary producers.
It’s important we are incentivising the right balance so New Zealand can have prosperous communities, increasing primary production and exports, and a thriving economy while meeting our climate goals.
Speaking of a thriving economy, I recently had a fascinating visit to Fonterra’s Edendale plant, which is a great example of Southland innovation — both historically and at present.
Edendale was the first exporting milk factory in the world and is now the biggest fresh milk dairy processor in the world.
The plant is carrying on that world-leading innovation by becoming Fonterra’s first processing plant in the country to install an electrode boiler.
It was also a reminder that Southland alone produces 2 billion litres of milk a year, which is the same as all of Australia produces. For every 10 cent increase in the farm-gate milk price, an additional $9.6 million enters the Southland economy.
There’s certainly a lot going on in our district. I hope the Southland summer is a good one and you have a chance to enjoy time with friends and family over the festive period. Have a very Merry Christmas!
