Farm Forestry New Zealand

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Australian Forest Growers conference, October

Timber design Award entries opening soon

Combining woodlots provides economies of scale and reduces costs

Forestry’s financials stack up against dairying

President
Dean Satchell dsatch@gmail.com
-Far North
-Mid North

Newsletter editor
Dean Satchell
dsatch@gmail.com

National Office
Association Manager Glenn Tims
glenn.tims@nzffa.org.nz
Phone: 04 4720432
 

Executive

Angus Gordon angusg@xtra.co.nz
-Taupo & Districts
-Middle Districts
-Hawkes Bay

Neil Cullen cullen@farmside.co.nz
-Mid Otago
-South Otago
-Southland
-Sthn High Country (south)

Hamish Levack hlevack@xtra.co.nz
-Gisborne East Coast
-Wairarapa
-Wellington

Patrick Milne patrick@cypress.co.nz
-West Coast
-Central Canterbury
-North Canterbury

Peter Berg
thebergs@ihug.co.nz
-Lower North
-Waitomo
-Waikato
-Bay of Plenty

Don Wallace
don@wallace.gen.nz
-Taranaki
-Marlborough
-Nelson


 

Notices

Information about the Forest Growers’ Levy 2016 >>

Latest headlines

Forest industry’s challenge to manage supply fluctuations
The pan forest and timber processing industry organisation, the New Zealand Wood Council (Woodco) says there is a supply challenge for many regions in the domestic processing industry. WoodCo media… more >>

Eucalyptus Beetle (Paropsisterna beata) Investigation underway, Wellington region
MPI has been conducting an investigation on a suspect eucalyptus beetle found on firewood at Waikanai as a result of a posting on NatureWatch.  The notifier… more >>

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Events

For more information on these events, they are posted on the NZFFA website >>
Branch secretaries, please make sure you notify head office of any branch or action group events.

• West Coast Field Day, Saturday, 20th August, Omotumotu Valley and Kaiata, 10:00am
• Middle Districts Forest Growers Levy Roadshow, Tuesday, 23 August, 2016, St Johns Hall, 35 Bowen Street, Feilding, 1:30pm to 4:30pm
• North Canterbury branch field day, Loburn, August 25th, 10.30am
• Wairarapa branch field day, Log logistics, Awaroa forest
• NZIF annual conference - Dunedin, Town Hall (Moray Place, Dunedin), 30, 31 August 2016 and 1st September. Conference Registration now open
  The two-day conference starting on Tuesday 30 August is titled “Forestry Exploring the changing regulatory and market environments”
  The Field Trip on the 1st September covers off some of the challenges being faced with expanding New Zealand’s forest estate. Water yield and quality are hot topics and the paired catchment study at Glen Dhu forest is one of our best sources of data. This study compares water yields and water quality for a tussock catchment alongside a planted catchment – which is now being harvested.
  Wilding spread is another major issue. As part of the field trip you will Landcorp’s Waipori Station to discuss wilding management on when establishing forest in open tussock country. The climatic factors of planting in the high country have historically seen Douglas-fir being the chosen species. Douglas fir has come increasingly under pressure due to wilding spread. Radiata x attenuata hybrids are showing potential for high altitude and dry sites. Full details on the annual conference can be found on the NZIF website.
• Australian Forest Growers National Conference 2016. Sunday 23 to Wednesday 26 October 2016, Launceston, Tasmania. See below.

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Blogs

New strategies for expansion of the bioenergy and biofuels market
Recent work to identify the amount of greenhouse gas emission reductions that the bioenergy sector could contribute to achievement of the Paris climate change emission reduction targets has shown that under a business as usual scenario it would be around 1.1Mt CO2-e per year by 2040. However if Government and the sector work together in partnership... more >>
Brian Cox's Blog

What's wrong with wilding trees?
Having been a high country forester all my working life and spent much of the later years dealing with wildings, I have long pondered on the pro's and con's of wilding trees... more>>
Nick Ledgard's blog

NZFFA members can set up their own blogs on the NZFFA website. Email Dean.

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Reports (Members Area)

Joint FOA/NZFFA Promotions & Membership Committee 8 August 2016

WoodCo meeting August 8th 2016

News snippets

'Dirty dozen' accused of cheating ETS
The Morgan Foundation has released what it calls the "dirty dozen": the top 12 New Zealand companies that it believes cheated in the way they fight climate change.
Among the list are household names such as Fonterra, Z Energy, Genesis Energy, and Contact Energy, as well as New Zealand Steel. more>>

Forester calls for polluter pays policy to encourage planting
A forestry leader has taken a swipe at dairy farming, saying it was time to make polluters pay with a nitrogen tax and for farming to be included within an emissions trading scheme.
President of the Forest Owners Association, Peter Clark, said people could not be expected to plant trees "when the current policies are sloping the playing field in favour of grass". more>>

Disaster Around Corner as Foreign Owners Clean Out Forests
New Zealand First is warning again that the forestry industry is heading for disaster.
“While New Zealand’s forests are being cleaned out mostly by foreign owners other nations, including China, are locking up their forests,” says New Zealand First Leader and Member of Parliament for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters. more>>

Wood-processing industry under threat - Wood Council
The Wood Council is warning the wood-processing industry is under threat, with a predicted drop in tree numbers made worse by small lot owners selling their logs for export before they're fully mature. more>>

Severe shortage of logs for Canterbury's sawmills
Canterbury's timber trade is in dire straights due to a serious shortage of logs.
The problem is two-fold. Not only are most of the province's logs going directly to export but the big wind storm September 2013 knocked over hundreds of thousands of trees that would have matured this year. more>>

25th Anniversary of the signing of the NZ Forest Accord
On 9th of August a large group of forestry and green ENGO leaders met with invited politicians and government officials in Wellington to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the signing of the New Zealand Forest Accord. This 1991 Accord was an agreement between the New Zealand plantation forestry sector and the environmental movement. In essence the Accord protected indigenous forest from clearance and conversion to plantations and supported plantations as a legitimate land use that had economic and environmental benefits to New Zealand society. more>>

Wood and carbon values boost forest interest
Significant rises in New Zealand carbon prices and positive prospects for exported timber may signal a renaissance for forest plantings, with new opportunities for landowners and investors alike in coming years. more>>

Bridging the gap between forestry and agriculture to improve food security
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation is calling for better coordination between the two sectors towards sustainable farming systems and forest management. more>>

Carbon tax could lower emissions and GST
A new, powerful way of modelling the impact of carbon pricing has been developed by University of Auckland doctoral researcher Sina Mashinchi in collaboration with experts at Cambridge University. It shows how a carbon tax targeting emissions-intensive industries, along with a revamped Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), could boost economic growth, with the extra tax generated used to cut GST from 15 percent to 12.5 percent. more >>

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Australian Forest Growers conference, October

Australian Forest Growers have extended an invitation to all NZFFA members to attend the AFG Conference in Launceston Tasmania (23-26 October, 2016) with a discounted registration rate.

Please note that early-bird registrations close at the end of this month (31 August). Also there are some places available on the preconference tour so bookings are still welcome for participation in this very popular tour (18-22 August).

The provisional program is now available along with all other conference details and the registration facility at www.afg.asn.au

Timber Design Awards entries opening soon

On Monday, 5 September 2016 Stage One entries will open for the 2017 NZ Wood-Resene Timber Design Awards. These prestigious awards have been held for 40 years. New Zealand architects, engineers, builders, students and others using locally sourced timber and wood-based products, manufactured in NZ, are invited to submit their projects for consideration.

Wood has long been prized as a building material, but continuing advances in wood processing and engineered wood products to improve their properties mean they are proving to be a more sustainable and economic alternative to other construction systems. A strong case can be made for high rise buildings of 30 storeys-plus to be built of engineered wood.

“Entries must be for projects completed between 1 January 2015 and 28 February 2016, and of course projects must have significant timber content,” says Debbie Fergie, NZ Wood’s Promotion Manager. We have a new ‘Innovation of Student Design’ category this year, which we hope will expand the range of entries even more. As they say – watch this space!”

The event will culminate in a gala awards dinner at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland on 9 March 2017, when all winners will be announced. For a full list of entry criteria, and a timeline of entry submissions and judging announcements, call Debbie on 021-807 002, email her at debbie@wpma.org.nz or go to www.nzwood.co.nz.

Combining woodlots provides economies of scale and reduces costs

Combining the woodlots was done to attract a reputable contractor and to provide economies of scale ensuring a high quality job was done at a competitive harvesting cost. The three blocks comprised total of 25 hectares of ground-based harvesting in the Whangara district of the East Cape. The woodlots were owned by the Seymour’s, Newman’s and Thomas’s. more>>

Forestry’s financials stack up against dairying

Last year, Carter Holt Harvey environmental manager Philip Millichamp told the Climate Change and Business conference in Auckland, New Zealand that when environmental costs were factored in, forestry stacked up well against dairying.

Large amounts of forest land in the central North Island have been converted to dairy farming since the collapse in carbon prices in 2011 slashed the carbon liability associated with deforestation. Millichamp told delegates at the conference that a report by the Crown Research Institute Scion showed that forestry could be as profitable as dairying.

That report, commissioned by Oji Fibre Solutions and the Waikato Regional Council and reviewed by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, has now been made public. It compares a 28,000 hectare representative forest in the Central North Island with a dairy farm in the same area, with 26,600 grazable hectares.

The report says that based on pure market drivers, a hectare of dairy generates, on average, 50 per cent higher returns than does a hectare of steady-state forest. But that’s without accounting for the environmental benefits of forestry, and the environmental damage caused by dairy farming.

While the report’s representative forest produced just under NZ$161 million of manufactured product, compared with the dairy farm’s NZ$194 million, the forest produced nearly NZ$31 million worth of environmental benefits, in the form of carbon sequestration and prevention of nitrogen leaching. The dairy farm produced NZ$18 million worth of environmental costs. Adding in other ecosystem services from forests, such as the impact on biodiversity, recreation opportunities, flood mitigation and erosion reduction, would further boost the profitability of forestry.

The full report can be downloaded here.

Source: 2016 Carbon News

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