The Country 26/05/25: Toby Williams talks to Jamie Mackay

Federated Farmers’ meat and wool chairman launches a new campaign, SOS: Save Our Sheep, calling for urgent action to halt the collapse of New Zealand’s sheep industry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Radio, Toby Williams kicks off the show from Federated Farmers
and Toby sos save our Sheep? How are you going
to do that? Good afternoon, Yeah, Jamie, good afternoon.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Well, it's up to the government to make some changes
and the critical ones here around the etes unings. Otherwise
we run the risk of, you know, I'm not having
a sheep industry anymore. And I think all the irony
and this whole thing, Jamie is last week when we
heard the budget come out, they talked about our export
read recovery.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
We are the only country in the world that allows
one hundred percent carbon offsetting through forestry within our etes.
Therein lies part of the problem, a good part of
the problem.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, it's really the main problem that and you know
the never ending amount of units that are able to
be rested in it. So ets is set up to
change behavior, produte his behavior, and the way it currently
functions is they can buy as many units as they
like now and just keep can to them out. And
so to keep doing that, they keep planting more pones.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Don't you reckon? There's an album of the Emperor's New
Clothes about this carbon offsetting system and the ets.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, one hundred percent of it's really a government sponsored
ponzi scheme. And those people who have got it early
and continue to maybe get in now, you know, are
really reaping the benefits of it. But we aren't seeing
demands of pine trees thirty years down the future, considering
in the primary production at least. Anyway, forestry is the
one secret that's really struggling. And you know, we should
have been utilizing more of these trees. We've got on

(01:29):
more processing and making all these products. Now we seem
to have a housing shortage in Australia and New Zealand
and a pine tree excess, so surely the two should.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Be Now you have written an excellent opinion piece that'll
be on our website, The Country dot co dot nz
and it's you right, and I'm going to quote you sorry,
because this is well written. Sheep are quickly becoming an
endangered species. Their main predators pines, pigs and poor government policy.
You go on to write, I'm only forty four and

(01:59):
in my lifetime we've lost over two thirds of our
national flock.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, it's a frightening number. Revenan. The first big really
came with wagenomics, and we can't argue that we had
a very inefficient sheep flock that we've turned it into
one of the most productive effashion flocks in the world.
Yet we can't keep productivity increasing at the rate we
have and maintain an industry that has jobs and rural

(02:26):
communities at its heart. So we need to have an
urgent changes to government policy to really make sure we
protect what we've got left.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Well, it's all very well, you shouting from the rooftops
save our sheep with your new campaign at Federated Farmers.
But as I said in the intro, how are you
going to do it? You're going to petition government to
change some of the rules.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, we are. Again, we're pushing for these easiest changes.
We have been for about four or five years now,
and we'll keep throgging the way through that They went
part of the way with their announcers back in December.
But there's a workarounds people have found around there, especially
down in southand and or Otago that we're still really
concerned about. And we're hoping to meet with Race with
an MBI about getting the rules up so to make

(03:11):
sure that only those people who are actually intending properly,
you know, in the fourth of December to be planting
those properties and pine trees are able to still do that.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
And sorry, you go no, no, no, not at all.
I was just inhaling and about to exhale, and you
stopped on me that the thing is a lot of
the pines. I mean, let's be honest about it. Let's
not sugarcoat this. That are being painted, that are being painted,
that are being planted right now aren't for forestry production because,
as you pointed out, unfortunately forestry are fourth biggest industry

(03:43):
and a very important industry for the primary sector. The
returns aren't that flash at the moment. You wouldn't be
paying good money for land to plant in pines if
your only income stream was production forestry. I mean, the
carbon credits are very much the icing on the cake.
But we've got the set things wrong.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a massive subsidy. I think
the best thing that ever happened to us, as mean
wall farmers and dairy farmers is when the subsidies came
off and we had to become more efficient. And you know,
with the carbon subsidy there if people want to put
a pine tree in and it's the best use of
that man's going to get in the best return over
the next thirty years without carbon subsidies, then one hundred

(04:22):
percent that tree should go into there. But the problem is,
I haven't found a single person telling me in thirty
years time where they're going to be making tens of
millions of or billions of dollars out of forestry. It's
not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, pines, pigs and poor government policy. And I think
the pigs, the feral pests are a real issue along
with the fire danger under climate change, under global warming,
that some of these carbon forests will present in twenty
or thirty years time. And I hate to say it, Toby,

(04:55):
and I'm a cynic on this one, but I reckon
there's a fair element of spray and walk away to
say one of these plantations yep, And.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Then that's what our big concerns are. There's no you know,
they can tell us you're blue in the face, that
they intend to other harvest them, that they intend to
prune them. The reality is completely different. You know, while
that carbon subsit is there and you can make a
lot of money, it doesn't take much for a change
of direction from the company that owns them to divest
those resources that are overseas, or have a change of

(05:23):
heart around what they want to do, or actually they
continue claiming their carbon after year sixteen and hoping that
ETS collapses and then they don't have to pay the
units back. That doesn't happen. If the ETS actually functioning
properly and the price continues to rise, then we are
going to have these teas and people just go, well,
I can't afford to cut these trees down now, and

(05:45):
they will walk away. And we've seen you know what
poor harvesting and you know mitslope failure does on the
East coast after get Brown and Hale, and you know,
we're suddenly going to start bringing this out to communities
all around New Zealand. And that's you know, unfortunately for
politics of the three year cycle and they don't look
thirty years of the future.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Okay, Just finally, you're based in the Gisbon region there,
you're kind of the carbon farming capital of the country there.
Someone sent me Toby over the weekend and I'm just
trying to drag it up on my phone now, but
I can't multitask some pictures of it. Is it who
he rew a station? Who? Who are you row of station?
And some of that land I'm looking at and the
photos the person kindly sent to me is rolling at

(06:28):
best sort of country and I'm thinking that should be
grazing an animal to grow some meat or some milk
or some fiber.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, the irony of that fie. I ran a massive
campaign about five years ago to stop those farms trying
to be sold to an offshore company. And we even
had a position to go to Parliament and carry out
and came and collected it from us and took it
down there and we met with the primary reluction Solecuvity
over this, but their hands are tied. That was sold
under the special forashis Est, which thankfully has been booted.

(06:59):
But farm was anywhere else in Newsida, not remote up
east coast. It was closer to the town here, or
it was because I went in the white Kadow, it
would be in dairy farm. That's how good that country is.
It's such the fact that it's isolated and the special
forest Chef gave a six week rubber stamp to come
and put pine trees into it. And you know it's
a tough blow over the East Coast, and I said,
we still cry about that now. And that was one

(07:20):
of one of our old family farms and my grandfather
sold through the dispensers in the late nineteen eighties.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
That's criminal. There we go, Toby, good luck with your
campaign to save our sheep.