Forest Owners Association past president and consultant Peter Clark said he felt compelled to respond to claims made by groups including Federated Farmers, 50 Shades of Green and Beef + Lamb that wholesale forestry threatens pastoral farming communities.
With 1.7 million hectares of plantation forest harvested over different times and replanted, forests effectively last indefinitely, locking up carbon reserves in the process.
The claims over forests eclipsing pastoral land use and rural communities also came despite New Zealand’s 1.73m hectares of forest plantings at May this year being the average of the area in trees for the past decade.
It is 5% down on the peak of 1.827m plantation hectares in 2003.
New plantings by late 2018 totalled 9100ha, compared to 30,000ha in 2001.
The lowest point for new plantings was in 2009 with only 1900ha planted.
Clark said the lowering of forestry area in early 2000s reflected land use change from forestry to pasture, mainly in Canterbury and the central North Island.
Calculations by Clark on employment from forestry put it on a similar footing to drystock farming with 1000ha of forestry employing on average six staff in the field.
A processing plant adds another 10 staff per 1000ha.
He has calculated agriculture as employing eight people directly on the land per 1000ha, plus two in processing areas.
Clark’s calculations put annual earnings before interest, tax and rent at $1538 a hectare a year compared to $203/ha/year for sheep and beef.
However. those numbers assume an even-age forest is in place and do not include the initial growing out period.
A Baker Agriculture report for B+LNZ said turning 130,000ha of hill country pastoral land around Wairoa into trees would slice 700 jobs out of the local economy, the equivalent of one job in five.
But Clark said the establishment of forest on all the farming land in the district would require every farmer to either plant their whole farm or to sell to someone else to do that.
“Most farmers would agree this is an unlikely scenario.”
The total 8500ha bought for conversion amounts to 6% of the district’s pastoral land area.
Despite Clark’s calculations on net profit per hectare not accounting for the grow out period for forestry, he said his analysis also takes no account of carbon returns likely to be earned by a first rotation forest.
The B+LNZ report found carbon farming forestry without felling the trees on maturity generates the highest value to landowners of all scenarios while having the lowest contribution to the region.
That value is a return of $9386 a hectare over 60 years at a 5% discount rate.
Peer reviewing employment numbers established 6.4 jobs were created per 1000ha over the entire 30 year life of the forest. That compares to an average of 7.4 jobs per 1000ha for drystock farming.
If the forest is planted only for carbon, only 0.6 of a job per 1000ha is created.
But Clark disputes the claim of employment irregularity.
“Most jobs are at the harvest end but if you look at the current forest age classes in the district there is a range of ages already, with a lot near maturity. Not all planting occurs in a single year and harvesting gets staggered over ages from 22 years to 30 years so the harvesting jobs become more or less permanent.”
He said forestry teams also prefer to live in the district they work to cut travel time.
“Once the forest is there we can expect skilled harvesting, transport and support industries to build up and become part of the community.”
The carbon-only forest scenario is unlikely to be widespread and mainly a good option for land that is highly erodible under either pasture or cutover forest.
