In presenting NZ Carbon Farming’s submission to the Environment Select Committee on the Zero Carbon Bill, company founder and managing director Matt Walsh was questioned by MPs who said they had been told by officials that 30% of NZ’s agricultural land will need to be planted in trees to meet the Bill’s carbon dioxide emissions target of zero by 2050.
Walsh said he has heard the 30% figure before and is puzzled where it came from. He does not believe it is correct.
NZ Carbon Farming has asked officials how they got the number but has not had a definitive answer.
His company’s land use is complementary to other farming activities, Walsh said.
“We’re very careful about where and how we plant our trees.
“We do not plant on quality farm land.
“Instead, we only plant on grade 6, 7 or 8 land – that’s the poor quality land, the land with no other productive purpose.”
If NZ Carbon Farming ends up with some quality land it sells it back to the community to enable it to be maintained as farm land.
The company, which has 73,000ha of forests in the Emissions Trading Scheme, both owned and leased, provides options and incomes for farmers, Walsh said.
“We have a product that enables them to generate long-term income from unproductive parts of their farms. This enables them to become part of the climate solution while still making money and retaining ownership of their land.”
The key to its approach is that the forests on its own land are not harvested.
“We establish them as long-term legacies,” he said.
“These forests deliver permanent carbon reductions for the long-term benefit of NZ and NZers.”
Because they are not harvested they require about 40% less land than a rotational forest for the same amount of carbon removed.
Rotational forestry will need two million hectares of land to attain carbon neutrality by 2050 and subsequent ongoing planting to sustain that position, whereas permanent regenerating forestry will need only 1.2m hectares of planting to achieve the same result.
“We have been working for several years with NZ’s leading scientists on the science of forest regeneration. Their research has established that it is permanent, regenerating forest that enables carbon removal to be maximised.”
Provincial conservation lobby group 50 Shades of Green spokesman James Cates is aware of NZ Carbon Farming’s planting policy claims but said the growing number of farms, particularly on the east coast of the North Island, being sold to be converted into forestry, will have a long-term negative effect on rural communities and NZ as a whole.
Cates, a Wairarapa farmer who helped present the 50 Shades submission on the Bill, said 50 Shades supports the Bill’s goal of establishing a framework to reduce NZ’s emissions to the point where they no longer contribute to any warming effect but as it stands the Bill contributes to a distortion in the rural land market by driving land use away from farming and into forestry.
That change will lead to detrimental social, economic and environmental impacts, the last of those including the fire risk of pine plantings that will never be harvested.
He understands why investors, not just from overseas but also NZ fund managers, can see the relatively short-term financial gains from the potential of carbon farming but it’s important to consider the long-term consequences.
They include the loss of agricultural land that has supported communities for many years. That loss of farm land will have a domino effect on surrounding properties, with those farmers not wanting to be left as an oasis of farm land in a desert of trees.
In turn that will hurt potential tourism opportunities in those areas because tourists will not be attracted by the views offered from a landscape of pine trees.
More research is needed on the longer term environmental benefits of planting native trees than the short-term pay-off to investors from pines.
Cates said there has not been a proper analysis of the Bill’s wider impact and that has to be a priority before consideration can be given to its targets and aspirations.
“The Government looks like it wants to push the Zero Carbon Bill through before Christmas. That’s not enough time to get it right.”
