Farmers fear forestry threat
Farmers reeling from the pace of change fear forestry could cut a swathe through rural communities.
King Country sheep and beef farmer Natasha Cave says the latest Government proposal for farm greenhouse gas levies is another nail in the coffin, and she worries about the stress on her community.
The prime farming area around Aria is already dealing with the aftermath of a severe drought, Covid disruption to meatworks and rising interest rates. Locals are concerned that pine forestry, in a boom fuelled by the Emissions Trading Scheme, will take over tracts of land.
Cave wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern almost a year ago describing a ‘‘never-ending deluge of regulation, paperwork and more costs that keep coming at us at a phenomenal rate of knots’’.
In the letter, she also said it was ‘‘soul destroying’’ that a farm in the area had been sold to trees for carbon.
Cave says there has been a huge amount of change in a short time and, although pine forestry has not yet made serious inroads into the area, a lot of farms are on the market.
‘‘You’ve got older farmers that are close to retirement, and this stuff starts to get pretty challenging for them. So you can’t blame them for selling up.’’
The Emissions Trading Scheme is driving land use change, says Aria farmer Martin Coup. Pine plantations can earn up to five times more than farming, he says, as major emitters offset up to 100% of their emissions through planting trees.
‘‘Is it more difficult to buy land because pines are competing? Absolutely.’’
The competition is driving up land prices, particularly on the more marginal land that has typically provided a way into ownership for younger farmers, says Cave, who farms in the Mokauiti Valley.
Some are describing it as their generation’s Rogenomics era, she says, a reference to the removal of farm subsidies under then Finance Minister Roger Douglas in the late 80s, a time when some farmers walked off the land as interest rates skyrocketed.
Cave, who is on the Aria school board and president of the playcentre, says the pace of change is pushing farmer resilience to its limit.
‘‘Personally, I’m still positive for agriculture but I worry about our communities and I worry about my fellow farmers, how much more they can actually take.’’
Farm amalgamations and changing practices have already seen a declining roll at Aria School, which will drop from three teachers to two next year.
Principal Pam Voyce says she and the staff will do their best to keep the school going as long as they can, after the community this year rejected amalgamation with nearby schools.
Voyce is married to a farmer in nearby Piopio, and says the ‘‘massive’’ changes in rural areas have unsettled people.
Dani Darke, who also farms in the Mokauiti Valley, says the area is a great place to live with good primary schools. The challenge will come if farms start getting ‘‘picked off’’ by trees.
‘‘It’s when they start picking up entire farms, and that might have a family in there that has three or four kids down at the school, that’s when we start getting into trouble.’’
Darke is extensively involved in the community, including the annual trail bike ride, which is organised by volunteers and attracts hundreds of riders.
‘‘Country folk, I reckon, do more than pull their own weight in their communities because there aren’t many of us, so everyone’s got a bunch of jobs,’’ she says.
‘‘They’re so special these little rural communities, they really are. You just want to protect these places.’’