13 minute read
Funding boost for ag and hort teaching
Gerald Piddock gerald.piddock@globalhq.co.nz
THE government has provided a funding boost for the teaching of agricultural and horticultural science in schools, committing $1.6 million to better supporting teachers.
The funding over five years is being provided by the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures (SFF Futures) fund.
Agriculture and Rural Communities Minister Damien O’Connor said the food and fibre sector is nothing if New Zealand does not have good people.
“Educated and enthusiastic people are our competitive advantage as an exporter, because it’s people that deliver technology and grow value,” O’Connor said.
“We’re backing the development of a nationwide advisory team to provide support to agricultural and horticultural science teachers, create resources, and provide important links to local food and fibre sector partners.”
O’Connor said the funding will also help young New Zealanders understand the career options that are available throughout the value chain and provide them with real-life work experience opportunities in their local communities.
“There are 126 schools across the country teaching agricultural and horticultural science and we’re aiming to increase this number, especially in urban areas,” he said.
The funding will provide for one full-time adviser and a support person based at St Paul’s Collegiate School in Hamilton, and up to 16 part-time regionally based advisers.
He said he expects the support network will be a huge help to teachers who usually have sole charge of their subject and often have to take care of farmlets or orchards as part of their role.
St Paul’s Collegiate’s agribusiness curriculum director Kerry Allen said the funding is hugely exciting.
The school is one of the business partners running the new programme, which will run in conjunction with its Agribusiness in Schools initiative.
“Agriculture and horticulture science sectors haven’t had any professional development funding before so it means we can provide direct help to agriculturehorticulture science teachers,” Allen said.
That help ranged from upskilling and resource writing to implementing the Ministry of Education’s new standards, she said.
Allen said she hopes it will lead to the programme expanding. Currently, about 150 schools teach agriculture and horticulture in schools at achievement standards and slightly more teach it at unit standards.
O’Connor said the nationwide advisory team will survey the professional development needs of agricultural and horticultural science teachers annually.
“They’ll provide workshops to build professional practice, tailored mentoring and support for individual teachers where required, and develop and distribute teaching resources,” he said.
“They’ll also provide assistance to enhance student achievement and help raise the profile and public perception of agricultural and horticultural science.”
O’Connor said he would like to see this approach continuing beyond the life of the five-year project.
“One of the goals of this project is for the model to be self-sustaining so it continues to support teachers and their students long into the future.”
TEACHERS’ ASSISTANCE: The agribusiness curriculum director at St Paul’s Collegiate, Kerry Allen, says the funding will allow them to provide direct help to teachers teaching agriculture and horticultural science.
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Foresters tread lightly on farmland deals
Richard Rennie richard.rennie@globalhq.co.nz
CONTRARY to what some may believe, forestry investors are not wanting to deliver a sea of pine trees across the rural New Zealand landscape in coming years.
Colin Jacobs, general manager of forestry investment company Lewis Tucker, told delegates at this year’s carbon forestry conference that there is even potential for significantly less land to go into trees, subject to forestry regulation changes.
Jacobs has overseen the establishment of the Dryland Carbon fund and more recently Forest Partners, with more than 10,000ha of land planted for forestry and carbon sequestration with investors including Contact, Genesis, and Z Energy.
“For us it is about getting the most carbon benefit from each individual hectare,” Jacobs said.
He said this could be achieved even more effectively with longer rotation (50-year) forestry being included in Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) forestry rules. Current regulations extend only to 28 years, with the government considering extending that to 40 years.
“But if you introduce the long rotation, it will deliver carbon benefits using significantly less land. A longer rotation model also would give additional areas of the country the ability to contribute to carbon – for example, Southland.”
Lewis Tucker has made a submission on the government’s proposed ETS regulation changes, asking it to include allowance for 50-year long-rotation forests.
Jacobs said the bulk of his company’s contact with landowners comes from farmers who have land that is less suitable for farming, and are keen to see it earning carbon income as an alternative.
“We look for tough marginal land to establish rotation forests on for a long period of time.”
Jacobs outlined some of the lessons his company has learnt in the sometimes fraught business of engaging in tree planting in rural communities. His company typically enters into a negotiation with a view that some, but not all, of a farm will be planted.
“And often the neighbours will want to have a sniff at that property. Every property we have looked at will have had a neighbour who may have been looking to buy it for the past 5-10 years, who may get bent out of shape due to not being asked.”
Jacobs cited deals where his company would engage with that neighbour and reach agreements where they may buy a portion, leaving a portion for his company to buy and plant.
“And then they may tell us about part of their own farm they have that could be suitable.”
As absentee landowners, Jacobs said, his company has had to work hard to build trust in communities, appreciating the nuances and relationships that underscore all rural districts.
“And we look at ‘What could we do?’ versus ‘What should we do?’ when it comes to planting.”
In most cases fence-to-fence planting of the farm is not the thing to do, and usually subdivided portions of farms are identified for trees.
For example, he said the company has a 1500ha Southland farm the vendor inherited and only wants to farm 300ha of.
“We had a chat with his neighbours keen on parts of the farm. We could have planted 900ha, but planted 560ha of marginal land into rotation forestry, and also got a positive working relationship with three landowners.”
Jacobs said his company also looks hard at climate risk mitigation.
“With drier summers we need to look at where water could come from for fire control. You are putting a hell of a lot of fuel onto that land.”
Geographic diversity is also critical, spreading that risk of climate exposure.
Jacobs emphasised a desire by his partners to see NZ remain a food producer first and foremost, with the ability to also deliver timber investments that can grow significantly in the next 100 years.
“From a long-term perspective, we think this is the right approach.”
CAREFUL STEPS: Colin Jacobs, GM of Lewis Tucker, says building trust with rural communities is vital when considering forestry investments on farmland.
Colin Jacobs Lewis Tucker
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UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: The structure of the ETS is such that it causes a ‘rush to plant’, the CCC’s Stephen Walter says – followed by a fall in the price of units, weakening the signal to reduce emissions.
Exotics surge on ETS carbon values
Richard Rennie richard.rennie@globalhq.co.nz
THE Climate Change Commission is estimating exotic forestation has surged to a rate well beyond the annual levels it says is required for New Zealand to achieve 380,000ha of exotic plantings by 2035.
The commission’s general manager for emissions budgets, Stephen Walter, told delegates at this year’s Carbon Forestry conference that the latest data indicates 60,000ha of exotic forest will be planted this year. That is more than twice the rate the commission envisaged.
This is also reflected in the Ministry for Primary Industries’ workload for accepting forests into the Emissions Trading Scheme. MPI’s ETS forestry manager, Simon Petrie, said there is an application queue of 130,000ha of forest awaiting scheme approval as of June.
The recent move by the commission to recommend the government limit carbon units and push up carbon unit prices is partly due to concern that current ETS emissions prices will drive large-scale afforestation for sequestering carbon, rather than behaviour change to reduce emissions.
“We are recommending 10 million less units being available over the next four years, and are aware of the ‘surplus’ of about 49 million units in the market that are currently not being allocated to carbon reduction,” Walter said.
He acknowledged the estimate of 49 million units is “highly uncertain.”
“But the proposed reduction in auctioned units will encourage participants to use up these units.”
The commission hopes a change in behaviour will also be prompted by the ensuing increase in unit prices, with a recommendation the carbon price pushes into a band between $170-$200 a unit.
“We want to see a much broader, higher band of price movement. The scheme is oversupplied with units and is agnostic between gross reductions and new forests.
“The structure of the ETS is such it causes a ‘rush to plant’, the price of units fall in the future, which is a lesser not greater signal to reduce emissions.
“If we allow this to happen in an unguarded way, put simply there is a risk of a boom and bust for the (forestry) sector,” Walter said.
The commission’s concerns that price signals in the ETS are not enough to invoke technology and behaviour change to reduce emissions were echoed by Professor Keith Woodford.
“Foresters today are telling me they want to access easier country where harvesting is easier, there are less health and safety risks,” he said.
Short-term rotations and the current price of carbon are providing the incentive for them to do so.
“The carbon price is not sufficient to change behaviour in urban areas but is just enough to incentivise planting pines. This could and should have been identified back in 2008 when the ETS was legislated.”
But some forest investors at the conference questioned the commission’s estimates that 60,000ha of new forest are due to be planted this year.
This figure equates to about 60 million seedlings, an amount that would seriously challenge the ability of the nursery industry to provide in a single year.
“With that sort of area, it could be that they are planting it out over two, maybe three years. I don’t know how we would have the capacity to do that much in one,” an investor told Farmers Weekly.
Stephen Walter Climate Change Commission
14 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – August 15, 2022
News NZ’s arable champions honoured
Staff reporter
THE country’s top arable farmers have been recognised for their diversity, entrepreneurship and commitment to quality at the inaugural New Zealand Arable Awards in Christchurch.
Federated Farmers and other arable groups have held awards before, but this was the first time a combined event was held, backed by the federation along with the Foundation for Arable Research, United Wheatgrowers and the Grain & Seed Trade Association.
Rob and Toni Auld, owners of Southland’s Auld Farm Distillery, won the Innovation Award for creating their range of spirits from oats, wheat and barley. The couple make whisky from purple wheat, black oats and black barley, and produce three gins from a base alcohol of oat, wheat and barley. They have achieved several world firsts with their products.
Federated Farmers arable executive member David Birkett, who farms at Leeston, Canterbury, was named Arable Farmer of the Year.
Birkett is a recognised leader in environmental/sustainable farming, with a focus on improving soil quality. He is said to be open to trialling any approach to reduce synthetic inputs, such as biological products, cover crops, retaining straw and more, and is always willing to share his knowledge and results, good or bad.
Former Federated Farmers national vice-president Karen Williams and husband Mick won the Environment & Sustainability Award.
Arable industry advocate Angela Clifford was named 2022 Food Champion.
Clifford formed the organisation EatNZ, and through this she promotes NZ-grown or -produced food.
She set up the EatNZ grain food hui, where NZ grain growers have been able to talk about the grainbased food products they produce and showcase them in front of an audience of chefs and food critics.
In 2021, the arable sector produced 2.3 million tonnes, a 31% increase from 2018, when total arable production was 1.8m tonnes.
Total grain and pulse production of 2.2m tonnes was a 30% increase from 2018. Meanwhile, seeds for sowing production grew by 40% from 58,268t in 2018 to 81,470t in 2021.
In 2021, the arable sector directly produced crops worth $1 billion. These sales went upstream of the arable sector and created total sales of all goods and services of $2.2b.
These total sales were equivalent to a contribution of $932 million to New Zealand’s gross domestic product. This has seen the arable sector increase its contribution to GDP from 0.3% of national GDP to 0.34%.
The contribution to GDP is sufficient to support 7687 fulltime-equivalent employees. • The full list of winners are: • Agronomist of the Year: Roger
Lasham, Ashburton. • Grower of the Year – Grain:
David & Anna Irving, Lanark
Downs, South Canterbury. • Grower of the Year – Small: Seed:
Hamish Marr, Methven. • Grower of the Year – Maize: Chris
Pellow, Pellow Produce, Waikato. • Emerging Talent Award:
Lauren Beattie, Rakaia, South
Canterbury • Environment & Sustainability
Award: Karen & Mick Williams
Ahiaruhe Farm, Wairarapa. • Arable Farmer of the Year: David
Birkett from Birkett Farming,
Leeston. • Innovation Award: Rob and
Toni Auld from Auld Distillery,
Southland. • Arable Food Champion: Angela
Clifford Eat New Zealand.
Birkett is open to trialling any approach to reduce synthetic inputs and is always willing to share his knowledge and results, good or bad.
NZ Arable Awards
TOPS: Leeston’s David Birkett (right) receives the Arable Farmer of the Year award from Federated Farmers vice-president Wayne Langford.
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