Federated Farmers: Pines displace livestock emissions

Trees help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The ability of trees to lock up carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere has been known for a long time but only now is it assuming significance in New Zealand's effort to reduce the level of greenhouse gases which cause climate change.

The huge volume of carbon made into wood in our forests should come as no surprise, but the ratio of carbon/trees to the livestock which produce half of New Zealand's greenhouse gases is not well appreciated.

It doesn't take many trees to mop up what a lot of stock produce. Doing the sums, you can see that a single 20-year-old pine will hold within its timber the same amount of carbon that a single sheep has breathed and farted during its entire life. The same sums will give you three trees for every year of a dairy cow's emissions.

At a farm level, take the average drystock farm with a mix of sheep, beef and deer. You would only need to plant out 2.6ha of trees every year to be livestock carbon neutral. It would take a very long time indeed before that would significantly reduce stock numbers.

Forestry can be a great investment as well. The main expense is roading to get the trees out. Short or easy access can make forestry a very viable proposition, not just a carbon offset that will be necessary for the day when the government really turns the screw on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.