[Animals] New Zealand falls out of love with sheep farming as lucrative pine forests spread

[Amaterasu イタチ]

 

Across one of the ridgelines of High Peak station, a line of sheep is on the move: gradual at first, and then in a heaving rush, an avalanche of dirty white wool heading into the valley. They flow around Hamish Guild like an eddy.

He looks across the valley, to where a slope of grassland splits in half, a velvety black expanse of pine forest sweeping over the hill.

“We’ve made a decision as a family, we’ll hold on as long as we can,” says Guild, a second-generation sheep farmer whose family has occupied this land outside Christchurch since the 1970s.

“Ultimately, if we’re an oasis in a sea of forestry, that probably gives us a distinctive, compelling selling point,” he says, and laughs. “We might become a museum: this is how we used to farm in New Zealand in the 2020s.”

These sweeping high country sheep stations, thatched by golden tussock, are at the centre of New Zealand’s international image. For almost a century, lamb, mutton and wool were New Zealand’s largest source of agricultural and national revenue, and at its 1980s peak, the ratio of sheep to humans was more than 20 to one.Now, sheep country is in sharp decline. Across the country, farm after farm is transitioning to lucrative pine forestry, fuelled by demand for carbon credits. Under New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme, landowners can earn credits – which can be traded or sold – for activities that absorb carbon dioxide. Farmland sold for forestry conversion can now fetch prices several times higher than its previous value as agricultural land. Over tens of thousands of hectares, wire fences are being ripped out and the paddocks studded with dark bushels of pine seedlings. New Zealand’s total flock number has fallen from more than 70 million in the 1980s to just 26 million today. This year, the ratio of sheep to people slipped below 5:1 for the first time since records began.

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At the same time the international wool price has plummeted, reaching the point where the cost of shearing a sheep is more than the price of its fleece. Farmers are also facing far more scrutiny over their environmental practices. But a key driver over the last decade has been the rise of forestry, which offers a way to cash out for farmers under increasing economic and political pressure.

A man wearing grey stands behind a flock of moving sheep as they move to the right of frame, with hills in the background
Taylor Green, the stock manager of High Peak station, encourages a flock across a stream in Canterbury. Photograph: Naomi Haussmann/The Guardian
For New Zealand’s government, forestry is a central building block of its path to emissions reduction, and agricultural emissions are its most difficult obstacle. Nearly half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture – mostly methane from gassy livestock. Currently, tree-planting is at the centre of its roadmap to net zero. Discussing proposed changes to the emissions trading scheme, Associate Prof David Evison from the New Zealand School of Forestry at the University of Canterbury, said that using current technologies, the country will not get to net zero by 2050 “without a significant tree planting programme”. He estimates New Zealand could need another 1.7m hectares of new forest to meet its 2050 net zero emissions target.

But that strategy is also coming under increasing scrutiny. In April, the climate commission sounded alarm about New Zealand’s overreliance on forestry, arguing that achieving a net reduction in emissions primarily through planting trees would be impossible to sustain in the long term. After cyclone Gabrielle, the damage caused by forestry debris created a huge public backlash. In June, the government announced it would be reconsidering the role of pine forest in the emissions trading scheme.

Seeing farms around his region converting into pine plantations, “there’s conflicting emotions,” says William Morrison, a sixth-generation sheep farmer from Rangitikei, in central North island. “I always loved going out on the farm, and I guess with our family being on the land for so long, there’s just a pride and passion for farming.”

For many farmers, pine represents a potential economic boon, but it comes with a huge social and cultural loss, dissolving rural communities.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/01/new-zealand-falls-out-of-love-with-sheep-farming-as-lucrative-pine-forests-spread