Friday, March 29, 2024

Farmland loss to trees uncosted

Neal Wallace
Becoming a net zero carbon economy by 2050 could result in a 16% drop in production from sheep and beef farms as livestock is replaced by trees to sequester carbon.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Productivity Commission’s report, Low Emissions Economy, said up to 17% of sheep and beef farmland Otago, Canterbury and Manawatu-Wanganui will convert to forestry as part of plans to plant the 2.8 million hectares of new forestry needed for New Zealand to be carbon neutral.

A shift to horticulture and forestry could reduce the dairy area in Taranaki by between 35% and 57% and Waikato by 8% and 22%.

Commission chairman Murray Sherwin acknowledged such a change will affect rural communities.

Modelling of a range of greenhouse gas reduction targets variously showed a 7% to 16% drop in production from sheep and beef farms and a range from an 11% decline to a 25% increase in dairy.

The dairy variation is attributed to some models forecasting an increase in dairy land from 2.1m ha to 2.3m hectares and others a decline to 1.6m hectares.

The commission calculates the bulk of the 2.8m hectares of new forestry will occur on sheep and beef farms, where poorer quality and less productive land tends to be.

But planting will not end there with further afforestation required to offset emissions growth beyond 2050.

Sherwin said that degree of land use change up to 2050 is comparable to the shift to dairying since the 1990s and the Government will have to manage the social and financial fallout.

“It is a shift in land use, a shift in the nature of rural communities and a shift in the workforce.”

The report is designed to shape thought on the issue rather than be a prescriptive tool.

“It is in a form to shape your thinking rather than anything you could say was a highly accurate, predictive tool.”

That aside, he acknowledged such a reduction in sheep and beef productivity is not to be sneezed at but, as has previously occurred, productivity improvements could temper any decline and returns can be improved by better marketing.

Under the various scenarios the report predicts between 11% and 17% of sheep and beef land in Otago, Canterbury and Manawatu-Wanganui will shift to forestry while forestry in Gisborne could expand 20%, Wellington 18% and Nelson by 17%.

Little change is expected in the West Coast, Bay of Plenty and Auckland.

Sherwin acknowledged the predictions will engender nervousness in rural communities but in some areas trees could help by addressing issues such as erosion.

“It will have impacts and the Government will need to work through those.”

Statistics NZ figures for 2016 show 8.5m hectares were dedicated to sheep and beef farming, 31.9% of NZ’s land area, 2.6m hectares to dairying (9.8%). Cropping was about 2% and horticulture 1%.

Forestry covered 8m hectares or 29% of NZ’s land area, of which indigenous forests accounted for 6.3m hectares and production forests 1.7m hectares. In addition, 1.4m hectares of regenerating native forest and 180,000ha of plantation forest is on sheep and beef farms.

Should 2.8m hectares be converted to trees the area of sheep and beef production could fall to about 6m hectares.

The financial impact of such a decline is not discussed in the report.

Sherwin says extending the area of forestry is essential for NZ to become carbon neutral.

The commission’s inquiry was done at the request of the Government and Sherwin says it is now up to the soon to be installed Climate Change Commission what happens to it.

Beef + Lamb NZ’s chief insight officer Jeremy Baker says farmers are rightly questioning the commission’s tree planting proposal.

“A lot has been done already and I don’t know if there is much of this so-called unproductive land left.

“I’m not sure how they came up with that figure. It’s a lot of land.”

Baker said farmers feet they are not given credit for reductions in greenhouse gases, which have declined much quicker than other sectors.

Methane emissions are 30% below 1990 levels, achieved while growing production and returns. They also own 1.4m hectares of regenerating native bush and 180,000ha of plantation forest.

“The sheep and beef sector has done its bit and will play its part again but it has to be economically rational and environmentally sensible and everyone else has to come along too.”

National’s agricultural spokesman Nathan Guy says rural people have been forgotten in the commission’s report and the NZ First billion-tree policy, which risks gutting rural communities of people, jobs and services.

He described maps he has seen of proposed tree planting in Rangitikei District as bloody scary.

“Effectively there would be a whole lot of sheep and beef production gone.

“The Government seems hell bent on being carbon neutral by 2050 at all costs and I am concerned at the on-farm production losses and losing our competition edge.” 

Guy said farmers will plant more trees if the sequestering value of riparian planting, shelter belts and native bush is counted.

He is confident the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium will discover a methane reducing bolus but that is only part of the solution to reduce greenhouse gases.

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