In an opinion piece published in the Herald on 1 February of this year, he stated there are 1.2 million hectares of marginal pastoral lands that should be planted only in native species.
On January 26 he was reported in the Herald as saying that he too disagrees with permanent exotic forests, but that it is up to famers not to sell their farms to people planning to plant forests.
However, I am not convinced that there is anyone, and that includes Beef+Lamb, who truly represents the interests of the existing farmers.
The role of Beef+Lamb includes protecting the sheep and beef industries from other land-uses.
For example, Dame Anne Salmond, who is an emeritus professor of anthropology from Auckland University, has authored multiple articles at Newsroom.
Those activities might be less ICU beds in hospitals, less houses built for the homeless, or less police officers.
When put in this context, then the issues are no longer quite so straight forward.
As it stands, and here I quote some figures used by Minister Nash in his opinion piece, “New Zealand has 10.1 million hectares of forests, covering 38 per cent of our land.
I have also seen plantings of pine trees on steep erosion-prone country where natives trees, at least in the short and medium term, are not an option.
I have also seen land, currently in very productive pasture, which some years back was in pine trees.
It’s all very well to have a policy of the right tree in the right place.
Within this complexity, one thing I am confident of is that the current policy of allowing overseas entities to invest in farms, as long as the dominant purpose is to convert the land to production forestry, is greatly flawed.
It was several years back, when carbon was valued much less, that I first became concerned about foreign investors.
In among all of the complexity, I also see excessive difficulty in ETS-registration of land that is naturally regenerating.
Perhaps one such solution would be to allow up to 20 percent of any sheep and beef farm to be planted in exotic trees as a permanent land use.
Under this system, planting of more than this prescribed area would require meeting some consenting hurdles relating to ‘the right tree in the right place’.
Eventually, abandoned farmland will in many parts of NZ regenerate to natives but availability of a nearby seed source is crucial so that birds can do their work.
There is a related argument that since we emerged from the last Ice Age over the last 10,00 years, our native species have not evolved particularly well to our current climate, particularly to the east of the main mountain range.