Latest Te Uru Rakau data to late March reveals a total of $80.3m in direct grants were given to landowners to January this year for planting 2640ha in trees under the 1BT scheme.
A further $96.5m was allocated to 1BT partnership projects.
The direct grants are being used by Canterbury farmers to ultimately plant 9065ha, of which three-quarters were exotic and the rest new native plantings. So far, 1270ha has been planted.
Additional plantings nationwide include 22,000ha under Crown forestry projects.
Canterbury-based Forest Management Limited director David Janett says the plantings have proven to be something of an outlier, not expected by most in the sector.
“But forest plantings (on farms) is something we have been pushing for years, and farmers picked it up very well,” Jannett said.
He says after the Kaikoura earthquake farmers in North Canterbury have used the 1BT fund to integrate forestry into their businesses, spread across long-lived exotics like Douglas fir, conventional pine, eucalypts and native plantings.
Plantings have been often done by some well-established Canterbury farming families who have recognised the potential rising carbon values can bring to their farming operations.
Janett says the latest Beef + Lamb NZ figures on expected farm profit averaging about $100,000 is a sobering figure prompting more farmers to look at other income options, something his firm is increasingly being called for help with.
“The grants were anywhere between $500,000 to $1m a farm. We are all now wanting to see what the Government will do from here. I still get calls from farmers wanting to know what they can do,” he said.
With carbon prices tipping over $35 a unit, the economics mean exotic forests are now capable of generating an economic return based upon carbon credits alone, and these are annualised, with no charge to pay them back when the forest is felled.
By year seven, an exotic forest can earn $1255 a hectare in carbon credits, which peak at about $1500 a hectare in year 11, through to year 16.
“The advantage for farmers is they already own the land, and just have to fund the trees,” he said.
Otago was the second most popular South Island area for 1BT grants, with 2602ha planted.
In the North Island Hawke’s Bay farmers took up 4266ha of grant funding for planting, 70% in natives.
Manawatū-Whanganui was next with 2322ha, 90% in natives.
Jamie McFadden of Hurunui Natives, North Canterbury, says he had not noticed an exceptional increase in interest for native plantings in his district.
“It would not have been a surge in demand, but it can be hard to know where all the 1BT funds were directed – I understand some went into “Jobs for Nature” scheme. We have largely had only small planting projects occur, but there have been a few of those,” McFadden said.
He says he is now cautioning farmers about where and how much they plant in native trees, given the high costs of establishment and ongoing threat from animal and plant pests.
“You can be of the view too that given those high costs, are we not better off to help farmers who already have natives in place, to control the pests they have to grapple with?” he asked.
“Natives come with a massive maintenance burden. Deer are a particular problem, stripping understorey and making it hard for podocarps trying to come through.”
