Labour proposes forestry conversion restrictions
WELLINGTON: The Labour Party will get tough on forestry conversions if it wins the next election, it says.
Announcing the proposal to allow local councils to determine what classes of land can be used for forestry, Labour Party forestry spokesman Stuart Nash said the change would take place in the first six months of the next term of government.
The move has been supported with reservations by Federated Farmers but strongly opposed by the Forest Owners Association.
‘‘Resource consent would be required for plantation or carbon forests on Land Use Capability Classes 15 — often known as elite soils — above a threshold of 50 hectares per farm,’’ Mr Nash said.
‘‘While 90% of forestry planting for (carbon absorption) happens on less productive soils in classes 68, we want to ensure all planting happens away from our most valuable soils, 15.’’
The legislation would revise the National Environment Standards for Plantation Forestry.
Federated Farmers Meat & Wool chairman William Beetham praised the policy.
‘‘We’re really pleased there is now acknowledgement there’s an issue with largescale exotic plantings — particularly those grown just for carbon credits — swallowing up land used for food and fibre production,’’ he said.
‘‘The result of this trend is loss of export income, employment and the undermining of rural social cohesion.’’
The conversion of farmland into forestry has repeatedly been accused of undermining thriving rural communities and replacing them with what critics called a ‘‘green desert’’.
This would be even worse with trees grown for carbon credits, not timber, since rural communities — stripped of farm workers — would not get an economic boost from visiting pruning contractors or tree felling gangs either.
Instead, absentee landowners would cash carbon sequestration cheques from afar, and the spread of wealth would stop there, leaving communities without a reliable economic base.
Forest owners have always contested this view, saying forestry actually produced more wealth per hectare than sheep and beef farming.
Moreover, forests were not spreading uncontrollably — there was actually less plantation forest now than there was a generation ago.
Forest Owners Association president Phil Taylor said Federated Farmers was actually contradicting a longstanding policy of allowing landowners such as farmers to make their own decisions on what to do with their own land.
He said its claims about the economics of afforestation were wrong.
‘‘Per hectare, per year, the export returns from forestry are way above the returns from sheep and beef farming,’’ he said.
‘‘Forestry will save many rural communities.’’
He said there was no need for the law to protect highquality land from forestry — it was already so expensive that foresters would not buy it anyway, and would instead leave it to other uses such as dairy farms.
Federated Farmers’ support for the proposal was not wholehearted, Mr Taylor said. Getting resource consent from a council was expensive and cumbersome — and a better way had to be found to solve this problem. — RNZ