Kyota.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The government's likely to pass a law banning farm to forest conversions to protect productive farmland for food production. It'll mean a restriction on planting forests on high quality land and it's
a response to the previous government's emissions reduction plan. Agriculture Minister Todd McLay has emphasized the need to protect productive farmland, maintain food security and ensure that forestry expansion doesn't come at the expense of agriculture and rural livelihoods. But have we placed too much importance on planting trees anyway? And
should we be focusing on other efforts elsewhere? Today on the front page of Canterbury Emeritus Professor David Norton is with us to break down what this all actually means and whether we'll be able to meet our ambitious climate targets. First off, David, can you tell us what farm to forest conversions actually are?
Yep. But it's a good question because it's often quite confusing and essentially a company that could be a New Zealand company, it could be an overseas company purchases a farm, typically a sheet and beef farm, and they plant the whole farm up in fast growing exotic trees, usually pineous radiata, for carbon sequestration purposes.
And so what is carbon farming? Is that the planting of the pine to offset carbon emissions.
Yeah, it's not to offset carbon emission. So carbon farming is basically the process of planting up a farm in fast growing exotic trees with the objective to seque to carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and to earn money from doing that. And yeah, it is called offsetting because somebody who is producing emissions, a company that's using petrol, diesel, whatever, can then buy those credits to offset their emissions.
So what's the main evidence for the government wanting to restrict farm to forestry conversions.
Yeah, so the reason why they brought the restrictions in is because of concerns within the farming sector that good quality farmland was being taken out of farming and put into carbon forests. The difficulty with carbon forests is that they are a permanent land used they have to be there forever, because once you've drawn that carbon down from the atmosphere, it needs to stay in those trees and perpetuity, so it rules out any opportunity to go back into
farming on that land again. So I think the biggest concern that drove this change was that desire to restrict that that sort of locking up a potential farmland for the future. In the proposal, it restricts it that you can't do it on land News classes one to five, and there's a limit on land News Class six as well.
Well. That leads me on to my next question, Actually, how do we determine what is high, medium and low quality land?
Yeah, so there's a national system that ranks all land in New Zealand on its productivity essentially, and so the most productive land would be land that's used to say cereal, you know, wheat growing and other crops horticulture, right through to the least productive land, which would be land that is, you know, might only graze one or two stock units
per hecta. That's very very low productivity. And so the idea of the regulations was to limit the conversion of high quality or highly productive farmland to pine trees and restrict that largely at lower productivity hill country, steeper hill country farmland.
That doesn't do anything to alleviate the fears of beef and sheep far as though, does it.
It shifts it more to the least productive end of the spectrum. So the better downlands lower hill country lands has certainly got much more restrictions on it. Yes, so it does alleviate it to some degree, but there is still a lot of concern in the farming community. I understand.
Yeah, because I saw in October last year, we saw the closure of alliance groups meat processing plant and Timoru, affecting about six hundred jobs, and fed farmers at that time pointed to land use changes, including the conversions to forestry, as a contributing factor. Obviously the forestry industry disputed this. But in a situation like this, do the environmental gains outweigh I guess the jobs in rural communities.
From my perspective anomen ecologist, that there are no environmental gains in doing this. I actually think carbon farming is a flawed process. It's basically a small group of people trying to make a lot of money in a short period of time with zero consideration for the future.
Yeah, because you've made a good point before, as well, to my understand my very basic understanding is that when you come in and plant these pine forests, it's like one hundred year commitment. You have to be doing it consistently, cutting them down regrowing for it to be any good.
Right, Okay, Two, there's really good question, and there's two important points in there. A lot of these farm to forest conversions are not being managed for sustainable timber supply. They're simply being planted for carbon and then basically the owners walk away and leave them. That's very different from a production plantation forest that's been managed on sustainable rotation to produce timber every thirty twenty five thirty years on an ongoing basis. So most of these farm to forest
conversions are simply being planted up. They sequest a carbon for twenty thirty forty years, and then they have to be in the ground because that carbon has been sequested. They're not being managed into the future, and they impose massive economic and environmental liabilities on us as we move into future generations.
Why aren't they planting native species? Why is it always pine and exotic species.
That's a great question, and the reason is that the whole emissions trading scheme that this is all working through is set up to make pines the favored outcome, and the incentives are all completely twisted and counter against native forests. And I mean, I think it's really important to recognize that people are getting rich, making a lot of money, getting rich over a short period of time from carbon credits. They get their credits and they can forget about that forest.
But someone's got to make sure that carbon stays in the ground in the future. And if the investors are taking their money and gone, then it's going to be future generations in New Zealand that are responsible for looking after that carbon that's been stored there, because it's supposed to be storedly. But at the same time, we know that these pine forests are not adapted to the New
Zealand environment. They won't maintain themselves, they will collapse, They will be sources of diseases, of dare of pa species. And you know, we saw what happened in cyclone Gabriel, We saw what happened to Nelson Tasman a few weeks ago. You know, these forests are imposing massive environmental liabilities on us. And what we need is we need diverse native forests established across the landscape into woven into farming systems, not
replacing farming, but into woven's farming systems. Unfortunately, the ETS is stacked against that. It just doesn't make it possible at the moment. This is what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said and his report recently. You know, the whole system is wrong. It's set up against natives.
So what you're saying is we are going to have higher emissions leading up to twenty thirty because of your governments policies.
We're going to have that accurate?
Nor what is that?
Is that accurate? What is that is that accurate? Will New Zealand have higher emissions than we would have under the previous government? Under your government in the period leading to twenty thirty?
What is accurate?
It is to say that the missions profile, the plan that we have put in place will enable us to meet our budgets for the period ending to it.
It's not the question I asked though, But the question I asked is under your government's policies, will our emissions leading up to twenty thirty be higher than they would under the previous government.
Technically, in the region of about one point five mega tons of point of difference by the end, So thirty.
Does our emissions reduction plan rely too heavily on forestry.
Absolutely. What we're doing is we're basically saying, keep producing emissions, you can offset them. But actually what we need to be doing is cutting our emissions, and the emissions reduction plan isn't doing that, is just relying on fast growing trees to push the problem out into the future, not addressing the missions reductions at all.
So the coalition brought in the removal of agriculture from the ETS, and that was welcomed by farmers, criticized by environmentalists. What do you make of this move?
Yeah, I mean I think what we need is we need to separate out methane, which is what livestock are producing from all the other all Carton dixide, which is from petrol and diesel and all that stuff. And I think we need to have a separate biogenic system where farmers can offset their own emissions in their livestock on farm.
Methane behaves very differently to CO two and that should be done in one system, and then there should be a separate system that is focused on reducing our overall CO two emissions from hydrocarbons, and the two should be separated out and dealt with quite separately.
What alternatives are there and it should we be focusing on more?
Yeah, I think what we should be doing in New Zealand from my perspective is quite simply. We should have a standalone biogenic methane system for farmers and they can plant woodlots on their farmers, they can use native vegetation to offset their methane productions. We need to have genuine tools in place that guarantee we reduce emissions. We're not
reducing emissions. We've got to bring our emissions down less fossil fuels, and we need to be building landscape resilience, and that by building landscape resilience, by planting diverse native forests, by establishing more native wetlands, we can sequest a draw carbon down from the atmosphere. But we can also make sure that we don't get the damage we've got in cyclone Gabriel and damage we've got in Nelson and other
parts of New Zealand. I'm involved with a project called rec Cloak and papatuar Nuku which pure advantage are not for profit has been developing which is aiming to restore two million hectas of native forest and wetland across New Zealand, interwoven into our primary production landscapes and not replacing farming,
but part of farming. Are rewarded for looking after native forests and establishing new native forests for all of those benefits, you know, cultural biodiversity, resilience, carbon draw down and so forth.
Well that kind of sounds like a win win, doesn't it. Why aren't we making So if I was a dairy farmer, say, is there a way that so I've got my fifty cows? Say I obviously have never visited a dairy farm, so I don't know how many cows there are, But say I've got fifty, probably.
A few more than fifty.
Can I then measure how much methane that they're producing and then be like, right, it's this much. I need to come up with a way to offset that on my land, say with native forests and stuff, and then kind of try and balance it out myself. Could I essentially do that?
Absolutely? Look, the science is very very easy to use. I mean, we know how much methanea cow producers, so you could do that definitely, and I must say some of the innovative dairy farmers are actually putting that information out there in the public. They are acknowledging how much
they produce them. You can do the math, and you may not be able to do it on your land because your dairy farm might be too small, but you could work with says sheet and beef farmer and you could do it in a collaborative way.
Why don't we make farmers do that?
Then it's a good question. The politics. Yeah, I don't have the answer to that one.
I wouldn't mind my tax money going, you know, giving a few bob to farmers to create native farmlands.
Well, I think, you know, I mean, I think there are lots of avenues that we could fund it through. I mean, there's a lot of interest internationally in high quality carbon and biodiversity credits, So people would be really interested, I think in investing in New Zealand. We're a stable democracy,
We're a reliable country for that sort of work. But farmers themselves, I mean, you know, they will at some point need to offset their methane production so that the incentive is for them to invest into their own land. But it's building resilience in their land, and it's helping make their land more stable. It's got other benefits out of it. I work with farmers dairy and she can be farmers helping them designeration programs for their farms so they can bring back native forest. I mean, there are
really great people out there doing this already. We just need the national policy signals of a place to make this reality. And I think for that we need to acknowledge that we are being impacted by climate change. We need to acknowledge that we need to have a national resilience plan, of which, you know, putting native forests back into landscapes as part of farming systems is a really sustainable long term outcome. Pine trees a short term They're
not doing anything for the future. Native forest, native wetlands are bringing all these other values and bi diversity who we are as New Zealanders, you know, all these other values back into our landscapes.
Of the two hundred odd countries in the world today, it looks like we are the only one it's carbon neutral. Actually that's not quite accurate. Batone is not carbon neutral. We're doone is carbon negative. Our entire country generates two point two million tons of carbon dioxide, but a forest, they see question more than three times at amount. So we are a net carbon zinc for more than four million tons of carbon dioxide each year.
What about if we look overseas, are there any other countries that are focusing you know, not as much on forestry, I suppose, but are there any good projects that we should be really keeping an eye on.
There's a range of different initiatives being taken in different countries and different ways of incentidvising and encouraging people to get involved in these sorts of projects. But I actually believe that New Zealand has the opportunity to show other countries. So turning it around, we have the opportunity to show other countries how we can do this sort of stuff. We're a small country, we're innovative. We just need to get out of this mindset at the moment of just
focusing on today and actually think about the future. And we've got huge credibility, scientific background in this stuff. We know how to do it. We just need the political will behind that to support it.
Do you think farming and forestry voices are equally represented?
It's interesting, you know, I hate to think what's going on behind the closed doors in Wellington and who's influencing what. What's not being represented is the voice of the environment, and that's my real concern is that the environment has not been listened to. I think I work with a lot of farmers, and my impression is that farmers are really interested in looking after the land, are really interested
in a sustainable outcome. They get the impact that climate change has on their businesses on their land, and they're in it for the long term. Farmers are in it for the long term, and I think we just need to have the right incentives there to help a system with even those sorts of outcomes that I've talked about.
I mean, the Climate Change Commission last month warned that while we're making progress and emissions are on track to meet the first budget that's twenty twenty two to twenty twenty five, we still need to urgently do more work. At the rate we're going. Do you think that we're going to meet our Paris climate commitments?
No? No, from everything I've seen, we're not. We're still consuming too much, We're still using too much, We're still we're still living in today. We're not thinking about tomorrow, and I think we're struggling, and I think relying on offsetting with short lived pine trees is just a massive mistake. It's just pushing the problem off.
Has this latest move set us back a bit?
I think it's just simply carrying us down a I think a Dedan street, and I think we need to, like Simon Upton said the Parliamentary Commission of the Environment said,
we need to radically overhaul the ets. We need to shift fast growing exotics into the BID methane system, and we need to start putting in place an approach that's based around using native forest of long term enduring carbon sequestration is going to be there forever of all of the other benefits for the landscape, for people, for bid diversity, But the government doesn't seem to be interested in that.
And that's a real tragedy, I think, because the people that are going to suffer are going to be the next generation and the one after that and so on.
Thanks for joining us, David, You're welcome, Thanks for inviting me. That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzidherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sells and Richard Martin, who is also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.