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From the President
Gisborne Conference 2009
Congratulations to the Gisborne-East Coast Branch for a very successful annual conference. Nick Seymour and his very efficient team can feel well satisfied with their efforts in showcasing both farm forestry and land-use in the East Coast region.
In addition to the normal business sessions, dinners, and award presentations, conference attendees visited a wide range of locations. The visit to Ray and Grace Newman's property Koro Station was memorable not only for their enthusiasm and sheer hard work but also the tenacity needed to successfully farm there.
Another very interesting visit was the trip up the East Coast to Ruatoria to view and get a feel for the East Coast Forestry Project. This project aims to reduce erosion on susceptible land by retirement and afforestation. We certainly appreciated the scale of the problem. For example, it is estimated that there are around 10,000 hectares of eroding gully systems which have been treated to a greater or lesser extent.
Since 1961, around 80,000 hectares have been planted to control this erosion, mostly radiata which has been managed for timber. High logging and transport costs will probably result in much of this forest not being economic to harvest. In response to this it was encouraging to see higher value species being planted, especially costal redwood. This long lived stable tree with a very extensive root system would seem ideally suited to much of this area and a recent sawing study from trees grown at Mangatu confirm that a high value timber can be produced from it.
At the end of the conference I felt that it was a great pity that more of the wider farming community had not seen and experienced the benefits that flow from intelligently integrating trees and forestry with other land uses. The conference, along with the Tree Grower, is one of the most influential means the NZFFA has to promote itself and its objectives to other land users. Therein lies a challenge for both future conference organising committees and the executive.
Award winners
I would like to congratulate this year's award winners - as with past winners they have demonstrated once again the relevance of the farm forestry model in aiding good land management and sustainability. The question for farm forestry and farm foresters is how we encourage more landowners to adopt our model. The NZFFA is very grateful to Husqvarna for their continued support of the farm forester of the year, the Landcare Trust for their environmental award and Audrey Hay for her award to support and encourage younger tree planters.
Emissions Trading Scheme
To date the ETS is following the timeline set out in last year's legislation. So far the government has not indicated that there will be major changes to the Act, in fact they are signalling that the forestry component of it is likely to remain mostly unchanged. Recently eight million New Zealand Units were released and the first trades have occured at $20 a tonne of carbon.
For most farm foresters there are still two very important deadlines. Firstly if you own less than fifty hectares of pre-1990 forest and wish to apply for an exemption to the ETS, then you have until the 30 June 2009. All pre-1990 forests or stands greater than two hectares are by default part of the ETS. Secondly all pre-1990 forest owners have until the 31 July 2009 to apply for a free allocation of NZ Units.
MAF also has information available on its web site www.maf.govt.nz and via its 0800 CLIMATE hotline. The take home message is that unless you are a pre-1990 forest owner, there is no real urgency to do anything yet other than keeping up to date with developments.
Pre-1990 forest owners with less than 50 hectares should now be thinking about whether or not to apply for an exemption to the ETS. Details of the application process, timelines, and information required from pre-1990 forest owners applying for a free allocation of NZ Units are expected any day now. The NZFFA will continue to take a very active role in promoting the ETS to members as more of the detail is clarified.
Patrick Milne,
President.
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