Minister Sees New Forestry Era

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31657, 18 April 1968, Page 10

Minister Sees New Forestry Era

Forestry had entered a new and exciting era in New Zealand, the Minister of Forests (Mr Maclntyre) said in Christchurch last evening.

Speaking at the opening of the annual conference of the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association, he said that reasons for this were devaluation, the run-down of American exports to Japan. Russia's raising of prices to Japan to a very high level, and the removal of price control on timber by his predecessor, Mr Gerard. This meant that in the last few months growers of trees had been getting some value for their product. This was causing people to look at the future of forestry. In pine areas where trees had not been tended, a return of $1650 an acre was being obtained, which was equivalent to about $4l an acre a year. It took a good farmer to catch up with this. Mr Maclntyre said that although he believed that the association’s conference

should be based on that outlook, he realised that there could be problems like disease and wind-blow. In the storms of the last week, the Forest Service had had some 2700 to 3000 acres of trees blown down throughout New Zealand. Mr Maclntyre said that the service offered to advise farmers about marketing trees that had been blown down. Referring to the farm forestry loan scheme, he said that the Government would meet all applications up to last August which had been approved. This was normal procedure. The aim under the scheme had been to have 10,000 acres a year planted by 1966, but this objective had not been reached because farmers had not asked for it. The future of farm forestry depended on farmers and it was up to them by their enthusiasm to force the Government to support them.