“Do something about the bloody trees” would be the most common refrain I hear around Clutha and when travelling about rural New Zealand.

Forestry has been, and is, a legitimate land use option for farmers and forestry companies. Always has been, always will. Sensible farmers have incorporated planting out of steeper, less productive, weed prone land for decades.

Forestry provides animal shelter, erosion control and the timber when harvested. Local industry and jobs have flourished, and the eventual harvest proceeds are often a tool to enable farm succession.  Timber exports are estimated to be worth $6b for the New Zealand economy this financial year.

Where there has been angst building up, is at the prevalence of good productive farmland being converted to forestry; Clutha being prominent in the sights of forestry investors. The driver has been the recent gains in the price of carbon sequestration via the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), and previously, low returns for sheep and beef farming.

Now landholders don’t have to wait 25 years for a payday, when there is a secondary cashflow selling carbon credits to CO2 emitting industries. Farmers, forestry companies and investors have not been slow to recognise these returns.

Entire farms were increasingly being planted out, rather than just planting in the less productive areas. It’s obvious to see as you drive around the district.

The New Zealand First coalition agreement recognised the serious impact on rural communities should this trend go unchecked.

On 4 December last year we announced limitations on the amount of land on each farm that would be allowed to be entered into the ETS, with rules due to come into place 31 October this year. The Bill to effect this change passed its first reading in parliament mid-June and is now open for submissions.

There is a transition period to ensure that landowners who had made demonstrable steps before 4 December 2024 to plant this winter, were not unfairly treated. Unfortunately though, there have been a few investors looking to game the system and stretch the clear intent of the policy.

The legislation has been drafted to styme these attempts. Any investor looking to flout the law runs a huge financial risk; efforts to enter more than 25% of a farm into the ETS will be in vain. 

The Coalition has taken the impacts of blanket afforestation on rural communities and our pastoral base seriously and we have acted. Now it’s very much, investors beware.

This opinion piece written by New Zealand First list MP Mark Patterson was originally published in the Clutha Leader on 10 July 2025: https://digital.cluthaleader.co.nz/html5/default.aspx