Mid Canterbury farmers have said pine forests will not “ruin the industry”, following a report that suggests they could replace sheep and beef farms in the near future.

The report, by the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge, said four different projects found replacing sheep and beef land with commercial forests was the easiest way for New Zealand to improve its water quality, under current policy settings.Beef + Lamb policy insights manager and principal science advisor Jane Chrystal said the results didn’t come as a surprise.

“We’ve been concerned for some time about the cumulative impact of different policies on sheep and beef farms.”

“The main policies are the carbon price, the ability to offset fossil fuel by planting trees.”

Chrystal said that the modelling doesn’t “[look] at the wider implications,” and human impact a shift in industry can have.

“The flow-on effect for rural communities of a loss of significant numbers of sheep and beef farmers is really big.

“There’s a whole lot of money that’s spent in rural communities, there’s jobs created, there’s kids at the local school, all that sort of thing.”

While drought and declining prices for sheep and beef products are factor, Chrystal said policies are the key forces at play.

“Sheep and beef farming is a stable industry, we’ve got decades and decades of history here.

“It’s nothing that’s happening on-farm that’s causing any of this, it’s purely the policies.”

Chris Bell agrees that authorities are messing with farmers’ abilities to make a profit.

“The beef and sheep industry is going okay.

" My biggest concern is that government and council taxes will overcome my ability to make a profit.

“That’s a big part of my costs that I have no control over.”

Bell farms predominantly beef on his 30 hectares outside of Chertsey, but the last few years have been tough.

“It's getting harder and harder to get a profit out of anything I do, really. Whether it’s sheep or beef, the margins are getting pretty tight.”

Bell said plantations were also at risk of being blown over by the strong winds that rip through the region.

Other environmental deficits that come with a plantation, like increased wildfire risks and mass erosion following a forestry harvest, were brought up in the report.

Bell doesn’t feel that the reality the models paint will realise itself in Mid Canterbury.

“I don’t think it’ll happen.

“Legislation encourages us to do these things, but I believe it’s wrong and I’m sure a lot of others do.”

Surrey Hills Station farmer Arthur Grigg agrees that forestry and carbon credit plantations won’t replace sheep and beef any time soon.

“That’s been limited already by what ground you can actually plant.”

Grigg, who has devoted 100 hectares of his land to a recent plantation, said changes to national standards for plantations have cut off a large portion of farms from being able to register under the ETS.

“Your big rolling farms down south that got blanket planted, there’s no way in hell they would get consented [today], or be able to get registered in the ETS if they were already planted.”

He said those changes came initial ETS boundaries allowed overseas companies to buy stations, which got out of hand in the North Island.

“There’re all these beautiful farms up North that should never have been converted into trees.”

Grigg said his farm opted into plantations to diversify the business, not for carbon credits.

“The carbon credits have the potential to be a very good revenue earner. But we didn’t establish the trees on the basis of getting that carbon return, it would just be a bonus.

“I personally see timber as a reasonably solid commodity going forward.”

By Anisha Satya