Risk of big shift to trees from stock

Rural communities face serious issues from poor livestock profitability, and land use changes resulting from the ETS.

The Government and forestry companies have stated they want to increase the forestry area by 2 million hectares.

This could take out 1,500 farms, and severely dent livestock and rural populations in many areas of the country.

The East Coast region  is one such  area at risk, as this Gisborne Herald article illustrates, and very little discussion has been had on the implications of such a major land use change.

High noon is just around the corner for the district’s farming sector and unless there are some dramatic changes soon, there will be serious impacts for the city and the tourism industry here, Federated Farmers Gisborne-Wairoa president Hamish Cave warned the council’s community development committee yesterday.

There was an urgent need to improve profitability or there would be a massive shift away from pastoral farming, brought about by rising costs, fluctuating commodity prices and high exchange rates, and there were now many farmers who could not afford to stay in the industry.Agriculture made up 15 percent of New Zealand’s Gross Domestic Product but farmers were getting only 6.2 cents from each dollar earned.

The average farm income here was now only $23,000 a year and with that farmers had to pay debt, reinvest in their farms and feed their family. Many were becoming financially unsustainable, with large proportions of this income going to the banks and to Gisborne District Council for rates.

The Government had already indicated that it wanted another one million hectares planted for carbon credits. Forestry companies also wanted to plant another million hectares, which meant two million hectares would be taken out of the agricultural sector. If each average farm had three children going to school, that would lead to an awful lot of school closures and further depopulation of the East Coast and rural communities.