Farmers forced out by foresters
When Kerry Worsnop and her neighbours left a farm auction last month, they were in shock.
Forestry money had arrived and left their community’s future in its shade.
They knew foresters were interested in sheep and beef properties but in Rere, 40 minutes from Gisborne, they were a long drive from the coast for a logging truck. ‘‘Everybody went: holy s..., here?’’ There were four farmers bidding but they couldn’t get close to forester Roger Dicky.
If you speak to anyone to do with sheep and beef lately, talk turns to trees.
Their communities are under threat and they feel powerless.
There is a psychological shift happening, Worsnop says. Rural people face a permanent change in land use, and in their way of life. ‘‘When it goes into trees that’s it ... Sheep and beef hill country never comes out of pine trees.’’
As investors eye land for carbon farming, many farmers are focused on the cost of emissions and frustrated by a scheme they see as inequitable. There is confusion over how farmers can use the Emissions Trading Scheme to their advantage and Worsnop says they still value producing a product in high demand.
Investors have much to speculate on. The value of a New Zealand unit is capped at $25 per tonne but the price could float to the international level, about $40 per tonne, and beyond.
Trees growing, without any interventions, would make foresters money that would stay in their pockets, Worsnop said.
‘‘It’s not like someone lives there, earns the credits and then spends the money. In terms of revenue cycling in an economy, carbon contributes zero.’’
Wairarapa-based shearing contractor Paerata Abraham has seen a big client’s land sell for forestry conversion, with two neighbouring properties also going into trees. ‘‘These three places, we shore about 10,000 sheep there, so that is 10,000 animals we won’t be employed to harvest.’’
Abraham and wife Cushla live in Masterton and employ about 20 staff. The farm sales amount to 14 days of lost work.
Worsnop says you only need to look to the East Coast Forestry Project to see danger ahead.
When forestry subsidies started in 1991, in response to the erosion caused by Cyclone Bola, farms turned to forests and the service towns reliant on them missed out. ‘‘No-one has bothered to ... see if we are actually better off or did that 20 years – during which the East Coast managed to achieve some of the highest deprivation rates in the country – did that have a link to afforestation?
‘‘The people who rely on rural New Zealand, who don’t own land, are ultimately going to be the ones to pay the price.’’
Tararua mayor Tracey Collis has seen 13 farms in her district sell in the past year. Every day she is contacted by a worried constituent. ‘‘I have not seen stress in our communities like this, not from anything else. Not mycoplasma bovis, even during the [global financial crisis] ... not like this.’’ Collis estimates the sales represent 47,500 sheep and 20,500 cattle gone. That meant 21
on-farm jobs lost and, taking into account the estimated community spend of about $25 per stock unit, the district will have lost $1.7 million annually.
‘‘There’s a lot of spend around a property whereas it’s not there for forestry.’’
Abraham said no-one was opposed to sales where they made sense. Another property he contracts to is up for sale but is appropriate for conversion. ‘‘It’s an outback property ... the animals probably struggle there a bit. But now you’re starting to see quality properties for sheep and beef going into trees, and that’s a real shame.’’ He said policymakers were out of touch but it was hard to be heard.
In the Masterton District, there are 964 people employed in agriculture and 345 more in agricultural support services, according to the council. It is Masterton’s second-largest employer. There are 112 people employed in forestry and logging, 0.9 per cent of the workforce, according to council data.
With farms selling at the rate they are, Collis says the people left are isolated and worried.
‘‘It’s hard to deal with that change at this rate and they just don’t know when it will stop, or who will be the last one left, and that is really troubling people.’’