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August 30, 2024
Pine Forests will Take Over Farmland Unless Policy Changes are Made, Warns New Research
As the National Science Challenge releases its final results, Our Land and Water issues a warning – and identifies eight areas for action to change our direction of travel.
A new white paper warns there will be a significant transition of sheep and beef farms into pine forestry unless current government policies and economic signals are reconsidered.
The white paper summarises the results of four recently completed research programmes, funded by Our Land and Water, that investigated how land uses might change in the future to meet New Zealand’s environmental goals. The four research programmes used different techniques and perspectives, but they all found a likely increase in pine plantations on land currently used for sheep and beef farming.
These results “raise significant concerns” but are not a prediction of an unavoidable future, says Dr Jenny Webster-Brown, white paper co-author and director of Our Land and Water, one of 11 National Science Challenges whose funding ended in June.
“The results are surprisingly consistent, and show what could happen if current policies and economic signals do not change to accommodate different ways of thinking about our land use,” says Webster-Brown.
“We now have a clear view of our direction of travel, unless people in government and the agrifood and fibre sector decide to take action. It is not going to be easy, but there is still time to redirect our system to a pathway that better reflects the aspirations of our farmers and all New Zealanders.”
Both pine forestry and sheep and beef farming create positive and negative impacts. However, rural communities are concerned that a large change into pine forestry will threaten intergenerational connections to their land and reduce population, employment, and services in their communities, harming the health and wellbeing of those left behind, says lead author Dr Bill Kaye-Blake, principal economist at NZIER and a science leader at Our Land and Water.
It has long been understood by the rural sector that meeting freshwater obligations will be difficult, and will require an uncomfortable transition period. The four recently completed research programmes aimed to provide more information about the scale of change required and the specific nature of the challenges of transition.
“This research gives us a wider perspective on how water quality policy, climate policy, and market signals could combine to drive a transition that New Zealanders might not want,” says Kaye-Blake. “The results raise questions about the choices our country wants to make. The answers will have big implications for our landscapes.”
“The results raise questions about the choices our country wants to make. The answers will have big implications for our landscapes.”
Dr Bill Kaye-Blake, principal economist at NZIER
The paper, Why Pines?, calls for widespread national-scale discussion about the social and community impacts of climate change policy, the ETS and the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM).
Why Pines? also highlights the need for ongoing research funding to produce robust data for less dominant and emerging land-use opportunities, and to quantify the risks and benefits of both pine and native forestry, so that analysis to inform policy decisions around future land-use can be improved.
Kaye-Blake says while the results of the recent research programmes are correct, they are also the product of assumptions, processes and datasets used by computer models.
“The results are projections rather than predictions,” says Kaye-Blake. “The modelling has not included a public and conscious assessment of the impacts.”
“We are still supporting national bottom lines for freshwater attributes and the NPS-FM,” says Kaye-Blake. “But now that we know what the full impacts of meeting them look like without changing the wider context of factors affecting rural communities, we hope this information can be used to focus on actions that will have the greatest benefit.”
The white paper identifies eight areas for action to support more diverse land-use in future:
- Wool and red meat exporters can continue to improve the economic performance of their value chains, building on the efforts of the sector, sharing added value with producers to invest in mitigation activities.
- Collaborative research between scientists and producers can develop lower cost, more effective mitigation options for sheep and beef farms to reduce contaminant leaching and runoff.
- Policymakers, producers, financial institutions and researchers could recognise other benefits associated with non-forestry land uses. For example, in places where the land is suitable, a small amount of horticulture could replace some of the jobs lost from sheep and beef farms.
- Policymakers could take into account the social and cultural benefits of sheep and beef farming.
- Researchers and policymakers can quantify the risks and benefits of pine forestry that have not been included in computer models so far.
- Policymakers can recognise the benefits of native forestry. Converting highly erodible pasture to native forests should be prioritised to reduce erosion across Aotearoa New Zealand.
- Policymakers can re-assess the influence of climate change policy on land-use change and its impacts on communities and the sheep and beef sector.
- All New Zealanders have an interest in the wider implications and consequences of land-use change to achieve healthy waterways, and could participate in discussions and decisions on this topic.
More information:
- Why Pines? A context for recent research results which appear to support land conversion into pine forestry (August 2024). Bill Kaye-Blake, Jenny Webster-Brown, Naomi Aporo, Annabel McAleer. Our Land and Water National Science Challenge. White paper.
- Summary of Healthy Estuaries research: More Innovative, Holistic, Connected Land and Water Management Needed for Healthy Estuaries
- Summary of Synthesis Scenarios for Future Land-use Change research: Optimal Changes for Water Quality may not be Financially Feasible
- Summary of Stronger Signals research: More Trees, Fewer Sheep? Incentivising Change with the ETS
- Summary of Mosaic vs Monoculture Landscapes research: How Aotearoa New Zealand Might Transition to More Mosaics of Land Use
- Research you may also find interesting includes the Future-Focused Catchment Planner tool to see plantation forestry harvesting cycles at a catchment scale and the report Examining the effect on sediment loss by differential pricing in the ETS to encourage land use change on highly erodible land
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One Comment
Encouraging diversification of landuse is valuable. However mandating native plantings for riparian zones, and as carbon sinks along with pole planting gullies would also have effect. Due to the bogus ETS which allows BAU for large companies such as Fonterra to offset means there is little in the way of emission reductions. The reality is international forestry companies infest the countryside with pines which they harvest and replant on marginally productive land as well as the usual LUC. This essentially squeezes farmers out.