Regional towns should be very worried about trees.

It looks like we’re going a bit tree crazy, and huge tracts of sheep and beef farms are being converted to forestry.

The biggest problem with this is how it affects regional populations

It really means a huge loss of jobs, and loss of jobs means a loss of people who decide to move somewhere else to find work. And a loss of people means things like banks, schools, retail start shutting down, and before you know it, you end up with empty towns like Patea.

Take the Wairoa District. 10,000 ha of its pastoral land has been converted to forestry. Every 1,000 ha of pastoral land there supports 7.6 jobs. However, every 1,000 ha of forestry only supports 1.5 jobs.

So that’s 76 jobs that becomes 15, meaning a loss of 60 jobs. That’s 60 workers and their families either unemployed or leaving town

And it’s not just Wairoa this is happening in: we’re seeing the same thing in Wairarapa, Tararua and Taumarunui. 

And sometimes you can’t go back. You can’t actually cut down the trees and put the sheep back, especially in hill country. Once the trees are up and back, it just becomes too hard to re-convert it.

You what to know why this is happening? It actually comes down to the Government’s 1 billion trees scheme, and the unintended consequences of that.

That seems to be the straw that’s broke the camel’s back here, because already a bunch of factors were encouraging property owners to convert to forestry or sell up to someone who would do it. Now the incentive of these trees has made it all the more alluring.

The other factors that were already leading us in this direction are that new rules have made it easier for foreigners to invest in forestry, that there is an encouragement to offset greenhouse gas emissions and meet reduction targets, and that the price of carbon, and this is a big one, is about to rise.

It’s currently $25 a tonne. That cap will definitely be lifted by the end of 2022. In Europe, where there isn’t a cap, it’s almost double that at.$44 a tonne.

And some companies are predicting that the $25 a tonne it will quadruple in the next three years, so there is a big incentive to get into forestry.

And that is great if you own the land. You can sell it for huge prices right now. And it is great if you make money off the forestry. But it’s not great if you live in the regions where people might soon be replaced by trees