Toby Williams: Federated Farmers Meat & Wool Chair on Climate Change Commission's proposal to plant pine trees to meet new 2035 Emission’s Reduction Target

Federated Farmers is calling on the Government to part ways with a new pine planting proposal released by the Climate Change Commission last week. 

The proposal comes after the UN asked the Government to come up with a new 2035 Emission’s Reduction Target by February. The Commission’s suggestions would see large areas of farmland used for planting pine trees. 

Farmers say they need the land for productive farmland. 

Federated Farmers Meat & Wool Chair Toby Williams tells Heather du Plessis-Allan the conversion will drive up NZ beef and lamb prices and force the country to become a net food importer. 

“We have to sacrifice everything. We have to sacrifice our nation, our rural people and our rural communities just so we can agree to a piece of paper that was signed in Paris.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heather Duke now Federated Farmers, as I was just telling
you before a sounding the alarm about some pretty radical
suggestions for how we meet a climate target, a new
one the Climate Change Commission reckons what we need to
do is the following. Get rid of up to fifteen
percent of our dairy cows, get rid of up to
a quarter of our sheep and beef stock, and then
just plant a whole bunch of trees. Federated Farmers Toby

(00:21):
Williams is with us. Now, hey, Toby, hey, here that
how many trees are we planting?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well eight hundred and fifty thousand hectears of what their
target is, which is about five hundred thousand hectears more
than what they wanted a couple of years ago. So
they seem to have, you know, been smoking something there
reckon and not quite getting their figures right.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Because it's a lot of trees. I mean, that is
a lot of lot of trees, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah. I think if you I'm a round scared, you
could plant all of the Gisbon viral region and probably
all of Hawk's Bay. Still need to go and find
somewhere else all the part of all the flat everything.
All that food producing company sounds real doable.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
And then once we've shot all of the animals, so
a quarter of our sheep and beef and fifteen percent
of our dairy farm a dairy cows. How poor are
we at this stage?

Speaker 2 (01:07):
I think, you know, we're all biggest on the on
the side of the streets. Absolutely ridiculous. And we've just
been through a winter where people couldn't afford to buy
and his head and beef and lambs we reported Australian stuff.
Everybody's you know, shock and amazing. I mean that's just
if they're weare a heap of this, they're No one
in his edit is ever going to be able to
buy our dairy, our beef and our lamb is going
to be too expensive for them. So we're going to

(01:28):
start becoming a net food importer, which is just absolute madness.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Now, Toby, when you hear stuff like this, I mean,
this has because it is so wild and so it
would do so much harm to We'd be doing so
much harm to ourselves economically. When you hear stuff like this,
doesn't this just reduce the credibility of something like the
Paris Agreement?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, it does? It just shows you what a you know,
what an absolute mind sild and what a croc really
that it is. You know, we're a very small agricultural
producing nation. You know, China and India and America more
emissions every day than our entire country does. Yet we
seem to have these people, the Climate Change Commission and
some politicians who I think it's the greatest thing in

(02:10):
the world that we have to do our but and
we have to sacrifice everything that we have, sacrifice our nation,
sacrifice our rural people and our rural communities, just so
we can agree to a piece of paper that was
signed in Paris less ago. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
So I'm getting the feeling that you're the kind of
guy who's not going to have a big cry at
the fact that Donald Trump is straightening to pull out
of this thing.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
No, definitely not. I don't like Donald Trump, you know,
I don't think he's time first that I would vote for. However,
he's showing some leadership there. He's standing up to all
these woite greenies and all the greater tim books in
this world and saying, you know what, you don't know
how to run my country. I know how to run
my country. This is what we're doing, and climate change
is important. You know, we need to do our bits.
Planting vast ways of our country and highly flammable weeds

(02:56):
in terms of a pine tree, isn't the solution we
need to do when need to be looking at how
do we reduce our gross emissions, not how do we
put a bandit on it and pretend we've done the
world of favor by offsetting them with some pine trees.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Toby, you can come back on the show anytime you want.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Okay, God, thanks you.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, love that. Thank you. Toby Williams, Federated Farmers. How
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