Plantation Management
Maintaining the resource a key issue for Tasmania P
rivate forests cover an area just shy of 1.1 million hectares, which is about a third of the total forest estate in Tasmania. Private plantation forest occupy about a quarter of that total forest area and 82% of Tasmania’s total plantation area. And the private plantations are around 70/30 hardwood to softwood and some of the total private forest bringing about 4.07 million logs to market per annum, which is nearly three quarters of the estate’s total forest production. And 93% of those logs coming to market off the private estate come from plantations. But unfortunately the private plantation area is reducing. It’s down about 5000 hectares overall from the previous reporting year. Hardwood is mainly driving this down 7,000 hectares while softwood has slightly offset that with a slight increase. And the downward trend reflects a combination of consolidation of second rotations around the high performing sites closer to markets, non-replanting of some uneconomic ex managing investments scheme plantations, and conversions of ex MIS plantations back to pasture or cropping. Tasmania established a pilot hub in the Northern half of this estate in 2019. It was put together with an industry/government collaboration and involved consultation with industry, community and government stakeholders. One of the key things identified by stakeholders was access to land and land-use policy for plantation forest investment. A report commissioned to assess and analyze the access to land issues in Northern Tasmania was finalized in 2020 and drawing on data and information from Private Forests Tasmania, information from some of our existing engagement programs and existing research from a range of collaborations and stakeholder input basically has pulled together an analysis and summary www.timberbiz.com.au
Penny Wells Chief Executive Officer, Private Forests Tasmania
Key Points here’s a downward • Ttrend in the plantation
area, which is expected to continue over the next five to 10 years.
n Tasmania is that the • Iagricultural community is at best agnostic to plantations and more often firmly opposed.
raditional investment • Teconomics also do not support greenfield establishment.
of the factors affecting the forest growing and processing sectors in Tasmania. In Northern Tasmania, plantation forestry occupies 30% of the available agricultural land, which is pretty high. It’s around about 0.5% on average in all the jurisdictions in Australia. The area of agricultural land potentially available for plantation is 37,000 hectares and available in that context means modeling was undertaken to look at land that was both suitable and available, not competing with other existing crops or enterprises and able to support plantations integrated with other land uses and able to grow commercially viable plantations. However, all of this still identified that there’s a downward trend in the plantation area, which is expected to continue over the next
• Picture: FWPA five to 10 years. So clearly maintaining the resource is a key issue. There’s neither the commercial will, nor social license to support industrial scale expansion into prime agricultural land in Tasmania. And the report unsurprisingly found that the immediate priorities are to focus on maintaining the current plantation footprint with expanding the plantation footprint in an economically, commercially and socially feasible way, being more of a medium to longterm prospect. The priority therefore is to identify and drive smaller scale expansion opportunities integrated into the agricultural landscape. And both of those priorities rely on recognizing that landowners have a range of motivations. Critical success factors that were identified in the report would be improving smaller growers’ knowledge of supply chain and markets. Improving their knowledge and acceptance of the integrated benefits of trees on farms. Definitely improving the business model, particularly offsetting the cost of establishment and simplifying the policy and regulatory environment.
The regulatory barriers were identified as quite high. In Tasmania, the institutional investment model favors mid-rotation acquisitions over greenfield establishment. And there’s a consequent dependence on integrating small scale plantations into the agricultural landscape if we want to both maintain, or expand plantations. Other complications in Tasmania is that the agricultural community is at best agnostic to plantations and more often firmly opposed. Forestry supply chains, markets and pricing are viewed as complex and lacking transparency by the agricultural sector. There’s volatility in demand and pricing, which creates uncertainty about future returns particularly compared with the annual decisions in the agricultural sector. Traditional investment economics also do not support greenfield establishment. However, the opportunities in Northern Tasmania as the report has modeled (indicates) there’s potentially 37,000 hectares that are suitable and available and competitive with other uses and economically viable for plantations in the Northern part of the state.
Australian Forests & Timber News June 2021
There’s an opportunity for development of further tools and systems for nonwood values to improve acceptance. The forest industry in Tasmania already recognizes the importance of working with smaller, independent landowners in terms of developing the private results. There’s opportunities to further develop effective practical arrangements between industry and landowners through partnerships and campaigns, such as the Tree Alliance Marketing Campaign. We already have significant goodwill from both the state and federal governments. This includes an existing positive policy settings to support integration with agricultural land. We have opportunities to capitalize on the emerging opportunities for solid wood processing of hardwood plantation products, as well as optimizing the transition where it’s relevant from short rotation to long rotation plantations. And we have the opportunity to continue to build on recent improvements to the Commonwealth Carbon Farming Initiative, especially to assist small to medium growers to enter the carbon market. 19
