INSIGHT
UPFRONT LIFESTYLE BLOCKS
Rural lifestyle blocks – boon or scourge? The popularity of rural lifestyle blocks has surged since lockdown ended, but are they really good for the country? Phil Edmonds looks at the pros and cons.
L
ast month the Real Estate Institute of NZ reported the number of lifestyle block properties sold across the country was the highest ever in the three months ended August 2020. According to the agents on the ground, the demand is only likely to escalate along with the prices. Naturally, farmers in the right place at the right time will be thinking seriously about how they might capitalise on this. But as with the recent experience of productive land being sold for forestry plantations, there’s an abundance of tension around balancing the rights 14
of those taking land out of production for immediate economic gain, and the collective need to protect New Zealand’s most versatile, productive land for the purposes of growing food for export and being our economic saviour from Covid-19 calamity. Lifestyle block development is nothing new, and nor is its attraction to both buyers and those in a position to sell it. Concern about the unchecked expansion of this market has, however, set in particularly as interest has widened from the negative environmental consequences of development (the long-
standing campaign to protect wetlands, for example) to the wider economic loss (calls to protect our productive natural assets). It is alarming, but not unsurprising, to find that in the last 25 years NZ farmland has lost 17% (2.2 million hectares) of its total area. In 2018, the total area dedicated to farms was 13.7m ha, and has almost certainly diminished more since then. A small part of that loss has gone into arable fodder crops and horticulture, but much more has been dedicated to housing NZ’s growing population – which between 1996 and 2013 increased 19% and has, of course, escalated further since.
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | October 2020
