The couple attended last month’s carbon forestry conference in Rotorua and prior to that they believed that targeted tree planting on-farm, while retaining productive areas for agriculture, offered plenty of opportunities for farmers but the wholesale planting of regions needed to stop and something had to be done about it.
From what Trotter heard at the conference, which he says attracted far more lawyers, accountants and investment managers than it did farmers, he now thinks it’s too late for that.
“I just think we’re wasting our energy trying to fight it; the ship’s sailed,” Trotter said.
He says the global economy is geared around a carbon model to such an extent that it is driving the cost of land and every farm now being sold on the North Island’s east coast, with the exception of horticultural or dairying land, is being eyed up for tree planting because the likely future returns from carbon will outweigh what can be made from sheep and beef production.
“The price of land now is solely valued relative to the price of carbon. That’s the value of land, not what we can produce on it,” he said.
As the price of carbon increases, Trotter says farmers like himself would be at least three times better off planting their whole property in trees.
He says given the price of carbon in NZ, which is currently just under $48 a unit on spot price, could double in the next two to three years, land values could follow.
“That means the carbon income off the hardest piece of hill country on the east coast could potentially be north of $3000 a hectare a year. That’s dairy farming money,” he said.
He says in recent years that had good seasons and good product prices, the top 1% of hill country farmers were only returning an effective farm surplus of about $800-$900 a hectare.
“And they were the very, very few. They were the real good guys with a tailwind,” he said.
“The average is closer to a third of that.
“We’re looking at land-use change like NZ hasn’t seen since the pioneers turned up and started burning bush.
“It’s shaken our faith in the future a little bit. I mean, is there one in what we do?”
Trotter says not enough consideration has been given to government policies around tree planting.
“I think it was because of the urgency they wanted to get trees in the ground, but why didn’t we work out how many hectares we needed to plant first?” he asked.
“Once we knew that we could have worked out what it meant if everyone had to get involved.
“Say it worked out at 10% of land, then all landowners would have to plant 10% (in trees). You pick where you do it, but you have to do it.
“They could have said these are the tree species that you can use because they are going to sequester carbon at the rate that we need to sequester at.”
He admits that’s a simplified version of a solution and there will be some parts of the country where that won’t work “but I’m sure with the collective brainpower of NZ we could have added in some complexity and worked out a better way forward rather than just saying ‘East coast, bin it. Just put it into trees, that will allow the rest of NZ to keep flying, driving and et cetera for a bit longer’.
“You’d be putting the onus back on landowners.
“Everyone. People in town. If you’ve got lawn in the back of your yard, plant a tree in the corner.
“Then everyone buys into it. Everyone takes some ownership of the carbon zero goal, rather than just hiding it in the hills.
He says councils could plant more trees in their parks.
“You could have legislated for that rather than what’s happening now, which is just basically paying people to get off the land,” he said.
“And you would retain regional economies and communities.”
Trotter says a lot of the big blocks currently being planted in trees are owned by either big syndicates or overseas money, which has the potential for future problems.
“That ownership model, there’s no duty of care. It’s just a percentage return on a piece of paper,” he said.
“And if the percentage return says ‘we’ll milk all the carbon out of it up until a certain point and if by that stage we’ve made the investment back in the land itself 10 times over, well, we’ve made our money’.
“Then if the price of carbon starts to drive itself back down again like it’s supposed to, what’s to say these people don’t just walk away and leave us with a great big mess of old man pines?”
He says like most farmers, he is not anti-trees or the environment.
“Far from it, we’ve been planting and fencing off waterways for years,” he said.
“So often in the mainstream media farmers are painted as the bad guys, Neanderthals out there wrecking things.
“We really do care. We want this to work.
“We want to be part of the solution but we’re not being given a chance to do that.”
