Forest manager Kevin Ihaka feels like he’s being pulled in two directions.
From one direction comes pressure from pastoral groups like Fifty Shades of Green urging a rethink on forest policy.
From the other large scale corporates eye expanses of land for future forest plantations on a level unseen for a generation, incentivised by ambitious Government policy.
Ihaka’s company Forest Protection Services is regarded as a leader in management and employment practices.
Forest Owners Association president Peter Weir says when Ihaka speaks the industry listens, with his company setting standards in training, employment conditions and workmanship.
With the clamour growing through provincial New Zealand to revisit the Billion Trees programme Ihaka believes now is a good time to slow the 50,000 extra hectares a year for 10 years target.
Failing to temper it risks creating innumerable problems for the likes of his company and the communities he works in.
“Things are looking a bit wild west at the moment.
“We are seeing cowboys coming into the industry, looking to set up gangs for planting. It’s very close to what we saw in the early nineties.
“Looking at those forests now, there are many farmers who resent going into forestry then.
“They ended up getting the wrong trees, had cowboys who did not prune and manage them properly and maybe did not get the return they could have from them. We don’t want this happening again.”
Weir said it takes only a mini-van, eight shovels and a gang to constitute a tree-planting business, undermining those businesses that want to invest long-term in the sector.
Ihaka said part of the rush to plant is caused by the tension in the political necessity of a three-year horizon to justify a policy to voters.
That comes up hard against forestry’s 30-year horizon and he has some sympathy for the position the Government is in.
That is made all the sharper by a Government acutely aware of already being called out on another bold target, its 100,000 home KiwiBuild policy.
“But it has become a bit of a mad rush.
“You really need a two to three-year lead-in to double the size of any industry. If we are going to grow jobs in this sector, let’s grow good, sustainable jobs.”
His fear is a repeat of the nineties, which saw, at its peak, 100,000ha of plantings in 1992 not only creating the cowboy problem but also a wall of wood requiring harvest about now.
“Well, we risk building another wall now.”
While there are more than enough seedlings to meet demand there is a risk of staff shortages for the hard graft of planting them.
“But that is the same for any industry right now and it is partly due to the poor employment practices the industry has used in the past – minimal wages, short employment periods like three months, layoffs.
“We have to work on tidying up our image.”
That requires an approach similar to what kiwifruit growers have done to secure more staff for seasonal spikes and ongoing work through the entire year.
“The good thing is the Government is playing alongside us as Crown Forestry and funding some projects so there is a lever there on the industry to come up to standard we have not had before.”
Halving the targeted planting rate will also serve to give forestry jobs a longer future.
While disputing some of the Fifty Shades of Green claims on job losses to trees Ihaka agrees more effort is needed to consider social outcomes of forestry, capitalising on the upsides.
“Even if you were to get 20 50ha blocks on farms in a district this could create jobs for people over the forests’ entire life in that area.
“At present everyone tenders the lowest figure for preparation, for planting, for weed control, for pruning.
“Instead, we need to integrate forest teams into plantations for the entire life of that plantation, creating jobs with a wide level of forestry skills for those people – otherwise it is just a race to the bottom.”
He is cognisant of rural fears about proposed large-scale pasture to forest plantings gutting communities for good.
But Ihaka suggests more staggered plantings and some short-term plantings of 10 years coupled to processing plants could break up the typical 25-year window.
“And I think we won’t be cutting up logs for timber framing in the future.
“High tech wood plastics, for example, will provide more processing opportunities.”
He believes overseas companies getting into forestry without needing OIO approval could also do with a tune-up by demanding greater social responsibility around job creation.
“That could be, for example, requiring them to use staff to weed forests, not applying herbicide by chopper, helping create and keep employment.”
Spending much of his time in Wellington helping guide the tree policy Ihaka said he’s working hard to get the slow-it-down message in ministers’ ears.
“This has a minimum of a 30-year horizon, 50 years really, and it is simply too important to bugger it up by rushing along too fast with plantings.”
