“Urgent”

Carbon News reports:

Research commissioned by Beef + Lamb New Zealand has found that about 26,550 hectares of farmland has been sold to “carbon-only” entities since 2017…

“Without urgent action, the sale of sheep and beef farms into forestry will only accelerate as the carbon price increases…”

According to Stats New Zealand there were about 11.7 million hectares of farmland in 2019, not counting the 1.9 million hectares of forests, which Stats also counts as farming.

I have plotted the 26,550 hectares of farmland sold to “carbon-only” entities since 2017. If you look closely, you can see the 99.8% of farmland that was not sold to such entities since 2017 in blue.

And just a reminder that the most significant opponent of forestry – probably the most cost effective and scalable technology we have to capture and store carbon dioxide and make progress towards our emissions targets – remains the Climate Change Commission.