Farm Forestry New Zealand

Southern North Island Wood Council finds the value in our youth

Erica Kinder, New Zealand Tree Grower May 2019.

There is an awareness from all members of the Southern North Island Wood Council, who are spread across the lower North Island, of the shortage of new staff entering the forestry sector, and especially of young people. Around 40 per cent of new entrants into forestry come as job changes with only about 12 per cent as school leavers. We have all realised the lack of a national promotional effort in this area, and anything currently in the public arena is not in the right format to attract the next generation of foresters. They are simply not watching television or seeing magazine advertisements and there is currently no national recruitment strategy that other sectors are using. In this context, the Southern North Island Wood Council decided to switch focus to promoting local workplaces and personalities in schools while also working with students and in the digital space.

Careers days

We are attempting to fill a gap by interacting with local schools at careers days and with class presentations.

By default, we are reaching a wider audience of parents and teachers and revealing our forestry story. Some of the regions have a good internal wood flow story, which can be depicted as the journey of the log, from a seed being germinated at a nursery, the tree grown in a forest, the log transported to a local sawmill and the timber built into a house. This simple version is very appealing and quickly understood by the wider community.

The variety of career options which can be changed and applied to differing parts of this structure is attractive to young people looking to enter the forestry industry.

The Facebook page launched last year has been gaining a good following with interest from students, parents, teachers and the wider forestry community.

It is a quick and interesting way to get out information and keep news fresh. Unfortunately, there are very few social media sites set up for New Zealand based forestry businesses, and it is hard to explain the validity of our sector when we are so invisible.

Websites are hard to link together and slow to update, whereas social media links all companies together to show the legitimacy of the ventures, and how we relate to each other. It puts a real face to the forestry industry. When I mentioned setting up a Facebook page to one of our members recently, they said ‘But we are not selling anything’. However, I think we are selling ourselves. All our businesses link together and without each other there is no forest industry. We need to present a picture of the sector as the united, cohesive range of organisations which we know we are.

More needed on farm forestry

Starting in Masterton last year, we launched a pilot programme called Forest Intern where two secondary school pupils were paid for a week of work. They visited a different forestry work place every day over a week of their school holidays and were paid at the end of it.

Part of their agreement required them to produce a video and slide show of their activities over the week and this has been used by the Southern North Island Wood Council for promotion on line and with other schools. Over their week they visited Centre Port in Wellington to see ship loading and log scaling, spent a day in a log truck, visited a sawmill, flew drones and visiting logging crews. We have met with such success that the programme will be rolled out across the entire lower North Island this year. Introducing a farm forestry element would be beneficial, especially to understand how forestry works in our rural communities and the part it can play as a separate crop to manage on a farm. Another event on calendar this year will be our

‘Forestry big days out’. They will be hosted in the Manawatu on 14 June, and in Taranaki on the 21 June and involve buses taking students to see some of the forestry workplaces in their region. School students will visit sawmills, participate in a silviculture activity, view logging and attend a presentation on measurement, log scaling and transport.

A crucial part of these days will be the lunch. As amazing as it may seem, many of these city children will have never sat in a forest, walked among planted trees or appreciated all the work which has gone into a planted stand. We will hopefully be able to picnic in a planted stand of trees, and along with lunch, have a carbon, environmental, biodiversity talk. We will be looking to work with partners to achieve the success of these days, such as the NZFFA and the new Future Foresters group.

Not taking things for granted

I also attended the student strike in Masterton on climate change, where I had a chance to hand out material about the forest sector and talk to students about how they thought our industry could enhance the environment. I was amazed that most of them, and these were in year 11 to 13, seemed to have no idea that trees took in carbon from the atmosphere. The ones I talked to did not realise that you could plant trees to offset carbon emissions and were not aware that there was an entire industry doing just that.

I had to come home and reassess what I presumed educated individuals understood, and perhaps we all need to do that. I think we take for granted that because we understand our industry and specific interests easily, including the benefits and negative effects, that we think the wider community does as well.

In light of this, I will be placing special focus on the carbon storage qualities of trees and really getting back to basics with some science in my talks at careers days and at schools. I think we need to take a step back, to realise the emphasis that this generation is placing on climate change and let them know how they and our industry can contribute. You only had to see the tens of thousands of children all over New Zealand protesting climate change to see the value they place in their environment.

Workshops on trees and carbon

A series of workshops is currently being run by Beef & Lamb NZ across the North Island, titled ‘Farms, trees and carbon’. The first of these was held in Masterton in April and the second in Dannevirke. I would encourage anyone on a farm who wants to increase their understanding of the billion trees project, how to apply for funding, or the carbon trading scheme to see where their closest workshop is going to be held. I am hoping for some skilled information in these areas that can be presented in plain language.

Another area which is of interest at the moment in secondary schools involves the agricultural programmes which are run at many of the colleges. I would like

to see a forestry element introduced to many of these programmes and wonder how we can help. There are currently limited credits that school students can achieve in any forestry-based study and it seems incredible in our current climate that there is not more emphasis based on exploring differing land uses and the viable financial options for introducing tree planting into a farming system. Many secondary school subjects are used in a forestry career such as maths, biology, economics and chemistry. It would be good to see a programme where all of these subjects can be applied to the forest industry.

More education

Having worked for Beef and Lamb NZ for six years, and now coming back into the forestry sector, I have been reminded of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ thinking which is often applied by the farming and forestry sectors. I do not believe this has to be the model for our thinking. Future generations will continue to need to produce food, but at the same time have viable financial diversification available for farms which allow for environmental benefits.

The only way to achieve this is by education and allowing individuals to make their own informed choices which can provide social and commercial value. There are new improvements to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme that should make it easier for land owners to understand how to apply it to their situation and more clear language extension models are needed in the rural communities to reinforce these values.

Erica Kinder is the CEO of the Southern North Island Wood Council.