Looking beyond the pine clones

Press, 26 May 1984, Page 18

Looking beyond the pine clones

Radiata pine, the mainstay of E resent and projected forestry in 'ew Zealand, may well become in the future the forestry equivalent of the “stockinette-covered nondescript lamb carcase,” according to a former leading Government forestry scientist who is now a Rotoruabased forestry consultant. Potential customers in Europe and Japan may well be quite happy to do without the pruned radiata logs which New Zealand expects to produce in large quantities from about the mid-19905, says the consultant, Mr C. G. R. Chevasse. Mr Chevasse retired from the Forest Service in 1981 after 31 years service, the last 19 of which were as a project leader for the Forest Research Institute in Rotorua. He has had a wideranging association with research into shelter and agroforestry (the growing of pruned trees in pasture at wide spacings with grazing between). In an address recently to the Institute of Foresters in Christchurch, he called for a wider investigation of the long-term world prospects for forestry, and of what New Zealand should do to meet likely demands. The present annual world demand for industrial wood is estimated to be 2.5 billion cubic metres, not including firewood. Of this, a high proportion (1.5 million cubic metres) is for hardwood. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that this demand will increase by 75 per cent in the next decade, during which time the tropical forests, now being reduced at the rate of about 15 million hectares a year, will “vanish.” Wood supplies from the United States and Russia are also predicted to decline in the next decade, and this is expected to lead to shortfalls in the supply of timber to the major markets of Japan and Europe. In Japan alone, the de-

mand has been predicted to exceed the combined export potential of Australia, Chile, and New Zealand within 20 years. A big increase in the demand for industrial wood in China has also been predicted. But, says Mr Chevasse, both the Japanese and the Chinese are discriminating wood users “and one must doubt whether they would be content with radiata pine except for low-value purposes. “The lesson of agriculture should be noted by foresters,” he says. “We shall remain poor so long as we neglect the production, for export, of high-value manufactured products rather than logs, pulp and paper. We therefore need to develop industries to produce veneers, turnery, furniture components, joinery, panel products and plywood in which decorative and special-purpose woods play a major part. “Radiata pine is a marvellous tree. It grows almost anywhere, it has exceptional silvicultural plasticity, its wood is versatile, it produces a lot of wood in a short time. We have therefore devoted the greater part of our attention to it these last 30 years. As a corollary, we have neglected a host of other species which could no doubt be grown successfully in this country. And the only special-purpose wood we are left with is clean radiata from pruned trees, and currently not much of that. It is soft, unstable, and strictly non-decora-tive, and I suggest that our potential customers will be quite happy to do without it. “Yet in the countries which could be our major markets there is going to be a very large and unsatisfied demand for decorative and special-purpose timbers which we are in no position to meet because our resource of these are so small. Nor are many of the sites currently devoted to forestry suitable for growing these species, as far as we know.

“Like the agricultural interests, we aim to continue producing more of the same, even though we know full well (or ought to know) our customers’ preferences. For example, we know the Japanese dislike pine timber and favour cypresses and sugi. Yet we are making no real effort to grow these species. All our potential customers appreciate fine figured or coloured timbers, yet we virtually ignore them. Radiata pine might well become the forestry equivalent of stockinette-covered nondescript lamb carcases.” The decline of pastoral farming is a challenge and an opportunity, Mr Chevasse says. The challenge is to find alternative crops, and the opportunity is that these, “could, over a wide spectrum of farmerowned land, be trees.” To achieve this, he says, foresters need to consider the following: • Forestry should be small-scale to fit the land-owning pattern in New Zealand and also to make best use of the land’s capabilities; © Farmers must become convinced that growing trees is a normal component of farm management; © Forest industries must be sufficiently small so as to do no violence to established patterns of rural lifestyles; ® Forest management and silviculture should be easy and cheap (i.e., as far as possible, not labourintensive); ® Financial or other inducements to grow trees must be acceptable to most, or all, farmers. “The 1981 Forestry Conference expressed the view (which seems more like a pious hope than a policy to be actively pursued) that there would be increasing tree planting on farms, while largescale forest establishment would be tapered off. There is very little sign of this hoped-for increase in

farm planting, although there has been an increase in tending over the last three years.” he says. The various incentives available for farm forestry are not achieving a great deal. Mr Chevasse says. One reason for this is that “the philosophical basis of incentives is wrong. Incentive schemes are based on the view that farm forestry is in some way separate from farming, whereas it is only another form of farming called silviculture rather than agriculture. “Ideas are much more potent than financial incentives, and progress can be made only when everyone accepts that the integration of farming and forestry is normal, correct, and profitable to the land owner. If this idea is accepted, then any expenditure on growing trees on farms can be treated as normal farm expenditure for taxation purposes, whether the trees are to be used for shelter, animal fodder, honey production, woodlots, agroforestry or landscape improvement. “However, the financial returns from tree growing take some years to appear, and some financial assistance is warranted. The greatest single cost is establishment. I would thus advocate 100 per cent subsidy on actual and reasonable establishment costs, and then leave farmers to do their own thing. We should drop paternalism, a relic of a bygone age. But, as far as possible, we should steer farmers in the direction of growing valuable decorative and special-pur-pose timbers. “There is, however, a major need to ensure that farm timbers are properly marketed. This means that the State, the largest seller of stumpage, has to create a climate where logs are properly graded and priced in relation to their intrinsic qualities and uses, and also to oversee the setting up of collective marketing systems (and maybe, later, appropriate farmer-

owned co-operative manufacturing industries).” The two most promising areas for the development of farm forestry, in terms of full integration, he says, are shelterbelt forestry and agroforestry. "Farming organisations have consistently discouraged the planting and management of shelterbelts, yet the information is enormous that production of all forms of farm crops could be greatly increased in New Zealand if shelterbelts become a normal integral part of farming. Horticulturists know this; farmers don’t. It is also abundantly clear that shelterbelts can be managed to produce highquality timber without detriment to their shelter values.” Agioforestry can be shown to give even greater advantages and more must be learned about this form of land use, especially from the agricultural point of view, says Mr Chevasse. "Broadly speaking, New Zealand could have about 220,000 hectares of shelterbelt forestry, up to IM hectares of agroforestry for the production of high-value decorative and special-purpose timbers, and a further 1.5 million hectares in agroforestry for highly-tended crops of conifers; all on land which is now largely in pastoral farming producing meat which the world is more and more reluctant to buy. “I have allowed for only 20 per cent of land-capability classes 3 to 5 to be used for agroforestry, and only 30 per cent of class 6. Even such a limited investment in farmer-operated small-scale forestry would have a major impact on our trading position within the next four decades if we begin to implement this policy now. That will be just about the time when the crunch comes in international supplies in decorative and specialpurpose timbers,” Mr Chevasse says.