So far, Mid Canterbury has been lucky, according to David Acland, Mid Canterbury Meat and Wool Chair for Federated Farmers.
The district has had little land converted to widespread forestry at the expense of good sheep and beef growing country.
“Land values in Canterbury are still too high for forestry and carbon farming to come in and buy the district up,” he says.
“It’s not viable.
“I don’t see it as a Mid Canterbury issue that swathes of farmland will be taken up by forestry. But if you have read the Environment Canterbury report for Mid Canterbury on new policy regulations for water you would think that with the restrictions the only viable option for dairy farmers would be afforestation.”
So Mid Canterbury may be in an enviable position and research commissioned by Federated Farmers and Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) found 54 per cent of New Zealanders supported a limit on the amount of fossil fuel emissions that could be offset with new pine forests.
Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of Kiwis opposed foreign companies buying New Zealand farms to offset their emissions.
A new independent report by Orme & Associates, commissioned by B+LNZ, showed more than 52,000ha of land was purchased by forestry interests in 2021, a 36 per cent increase on the previous two years, and up from 7000ha in 2017.
This is far more than the 25,000ha a year of exotics that the Climate Change Commission had suggested were needed to achieve New Zealand’s climate change objectives.
Of the 175,000ha of land purchased for afforestation over the past five years, about 134,500ha was grassland suitable for sheep and beef.
If 100 per cent of this suitable land was planted, B+LNZ expected this would lead to a decline of around 1 million stock units, equating to an annual farm production loss of $170 million at the farm gate and a cumulative production loss of $540 million from progressive planting from 2017 to 2022.
“We have been tracking whole farm sales data on a regular basis and we’re increasingly alarmed at the scale, pace, and style of land use change across the country,” said Sam McIvor, chief executive of B+LNZ.
“In 2017, only 7000 hectares of sheep and beef farmland was sold with the intention to convert into forestry, so the jump to 52,000 hectares in 2021 is a hammer blow for our farmers and our sector.”

• By Pat Deavoll