Andrew Hoggard: Associate Agriculture Minister on the Save our Sheep campaign, impact of carbon farming

Farmers are sounding the alarm, warning the sheep industry is collapsing. 

Numbers in flocks have declined from 70 million just over 40 years ago to 25 million today.  

Farmers say carbon farming is the main factor, with 260 thousand hectares of land converted into forestry between 2017 and 2024. 

They say the farms harbour pests like stoats, feral pigs, and deer, which come onto their land and harm their livestock. 

Associate Agriculture Minister Andrew Hoggard told Ryan Bridge the problem has grown in the last three or four years – a lack of hunting during the Covid lockdowns seemingly allowing pests to breed. 

He says as they redo the Biosecurity Act, they’ll be looking at the clause dictating a landowner must maintain and control pests within their boundary, to see if it needs tightening. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Farmers fuming this morning. They say carbon farms have been
harboring pests like stoats, possums, feral pegs, deer coming onto
their land and harming livestock with no accountability. There's a
new campaign out to as Save our Sheep. Andrew Hoggard
is the Associate Agriculture Minister with me this morning. Andrew,
good morning, coome On. All right, hey, what's happening with

(00:20):
the pests coming across.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I mean, it's been a growing problem over the last
three or four years and quite frankly, I think go
back to the COVID lockdown, it just seemed like there
was a explosion in pest numbers across firms and seen
more and more deer on my place than I ever
did before, and so a combination of people not going
out hunting just allowed lots of breeding. And I think

(00:46):
in terms of the you know those forestry blocks sing
I'm going to have a look into and we're redoing
the Biosecurity Act at the moment, and I know in
the old Act there was always a duty of a
landowner to maintain control pests within the boundary and make
sure they're not going across their boundary to other people's property.
So I'll take a double look at what we're proposing

(01:07):
there as to whether or not that needs to be
strengthened up.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
So you would potentially put more onus on the carbon
farmers to look after the deer and the pests and
the stoats and everything on their land so that it
doesn't go and annoy everybody else.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, I mean definitely, I mean that's part of the
deal would be, you know, you look after You're responsible
for what happens on your property, and you should not
be exporting problems from across your property to your neighbors,
to your duty as a landowner to control your what's
happening in your property, make sure those problems don't go

(01:42):
across what's the.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Fin what happens at the moment if that's found to
have happened.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Basically from memory, and I've only ever heard about this
in terms of weed pests. You know, the regional council
might come by and say, hey, you've got too many
soles or whatever on your property. You need to go
and manage them. I don't think, to be honest, that
it's something up until this point that's ever really been

(02:09):
a big, well connected or look or looked at even
or taken seriously. So you know, potentially this is something
we do need to look into a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
What could you do? I mean, obviously it would probably
be hard to will presumably be quite hard to prove.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Uh, I mean, yeah, that would be something would need
to have a look into. I mean, you can easily
do counts of animals and go, well, look, there's a
truckload of pigs here. You need to this has become
a problem, and you can see the damage that there's
been occurring on neighboring property and you know, make some
sort of slav them with a fine, fine or just

(02:45):
the direction that they need to take care of these
pests and invest in getting hunters into remove these pests.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Is the expansion of carbon farms. The reason that this
save our Sheep campaign is getting underway.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I think it's part of the reason. Another part is
that I believe concerned about what might be happening in
terms of me sane targets. But yeah, we haven't had
those discussions between parties yet as to what those targets
may well be. So I think they're probably putting a

(03:21):
stake in the ground.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
When are those chats happening.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Not sure. I'm not the one that is required to
have The other ministers have to chat with me, not
the other way around. So I am waiting with bated breath.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
You're waiting to be chatted at. Yeah, you appreciate your
time this morning. Take here Andrew Hoggart, who's the Associate
Agriculture Minister.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
For more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
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