Forest360 Masterton team leader for land-use Michelle McCabe, who took a Farms, Trees and Carbon workshop for Beef + Lamb NZ recently, says one of the most common missed opportunities she sees on farms is around best land-use.
She says with a bit of extra planning and strategic planting there is potential for many farmers to take advantage of what they are already doing and create potential new income streams.
To qualify as forest land under the ETS, plantings must be at least one-hectare in tree species that have the potential to grow higher than five metres.
The land itself has to have an average potential width of 30m, and the potential canopy cover has to be more than 30% of the area being claimed for.
She says almost all types of on-farm plantings can be designed to fit with the ETS forest land definition.
She says there are many farms with erosion-prone areas already in poplar poles that would not need much more area planted to qualify for the ETS, creating a possible extra earner from carbon credits.
There are also plenty of opportunities with gullies that are already in natives. They may not be large enough to qualify for the ETS but by extending them, or linking different areas with additional planting, it’s possible to make them large enough so that they do.
McCabe encourages farmers to check the history of their land to see whether it qualifies as pre-1990 land under the scheme and the associated obligations and opportunities.
She says once planted areas come under the ETS farmers can sell their credits to emitters or investors, or just let them sit in their account until they choose to sell at the market price.
About 50 farmers attended the workshop at Pete and Ally Apthorp’s Pahiatua farm.
It was the second one held on the topic in the past few weeks. The first one in Taihape was also fully subscribed, with about 25 farmers attending.
The Apthorps have 21.2ha currently registered in the ETS, including 12.6ha in native reversion, 2.7ha in riparian planting and 5.9ha in radiata pine.
They plan to expand their native reversion by another 4.1ha, along with another 3.8ha in native riparian planting, which will help link to larger reversion areas.
There are also plans to target 19ha of erosion-prone gullies with poplar and willow planting.
A variety of native trees have been planted, including cabbage, pittosporum and kanuka.
The Apthorps have planted both natives and exotics on their property but Pete says from a purely business perspective, it would have made more sense for him to have only planted pine trees.
“It’s a big problem that there’s no incentive to have natives,” Pete said.
“Something needs to be done to make natives more attractive, it’s too profitable to do pine trees.”
