Beef and sheep farmers in New Zealand call for limits to carbon farming

A significant amount of productive sheep and beef farmland has been converted to forestry over recent years, reinforcing the need for limits on carbon farming, according to Beef and Lamb NZ. The organisation, which represents the country’s sheep and beef farmers, commissioned rural consultancy BakerAg to look at the extent of farmland being sold for forestry. The report estimated about 26,550 hectares of the 77,800ha of farms sold into forestry since 2017 were to carbon-only entities, or about 34 per cent. While polluters can offset their emissions by planting trees, the system has been criticised for failing to provide enough incentives for them to reduce their emissions, and for not taking into account the impact on productive land and rural communities. The Climate Change Commission has called for a higher carbon price, to encourage a faster reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. However it is also concerned that a high price would prompt too much land to be converted into ...