The Press MONDAY, APRIL 16, 1962. Expanding The Forests

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29799, 16 April 1962, Page 12

The Press MONDAY, APRIL 16, 1962. Expanding The Forests

The Government’s intention to lend money to farmers to encourage the development of farm forestry was announced by the Minister of Forests (Mr Gerard) a year ago; and at the annual conference of the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association at Timaru last week the Minister was able to give some details. A bill to come before Parliament this year will authorise lending money to farmers for planting and silvicultural work, the loans to be subject to rebates conditional upon the proper establishment and treatment of the crop. Repayment of principal will begin in the twentieth year from the granting of the loan or in the first year of realisation, whichever is the sooner. It is intended to limit the area of private planting under the scheme in any one year to 10,000 acres so as to preserve a proper series of age classes of trees. A sum of £700,000 is involved, of which £30,000 will be lent this year, £90,000 next year, £140,000 in 1964, £190,000 in 1965, and £250,000 in 1966.

A farm forestry scheme is intended to do no more, of course, than substantially to supplement major planting schemes by the State Forest Service and commercial growers. For several years various fiscal concessions,

including some relief from death duties and the spreading of royalty income over a number of years, have been made to encourage farmers to grow timber; but it has been obvious that something more was neces-

sary if landowners were to do so on the scale intended. The loan scheme has attractions and it may achieve the desired end. No-one can be sure, of course, how farmers will accept a totally different form of land use, which offers long-term rather than reasonably immediate returns.

Farm forestry might help in adjusting the New Zealand farm economy to the new situation the Common Market may create. In his last annual report, the

Director-General of Forests (Mr A. L. Poole) thought the need for more intensive planting in the future, together with the spectacular advance in earnings from the new pulp and paper industry, had brought forestry well within range of challenging the claims of agriculture for arable land. If this claim met the test of careful examination, farm forestry would obviously be of immense value to New Zealand and to landowners even in normal circumstances, perhaps justifying a much larger scheme than the Government now proposes. In abnormal circumstances, it could well be something of a lifeline for farming. While the Government’s proposals are welcome, they can be regarded as no more than tentative, and likely to be subject to rapid and perhaps drastic readjustment. Financing farm forestry on a large scale to produce incomes over the period land is committed to forestry until a sustained yield is obtained is something for which New Zealand might successfully seek World Bank loans.