Gisborne farmers turning pines into pasture | EP 98

In a region where plenty of productive farmland has disappeared into pine trees, two farming couples are doing something uncommon – turning a forestry block back into a working farm.

Sam and Gemma Hain, and Matt and Kate Long, have just taken ownership of a 400ha property planted almost entirely in young pines. 

In this episode, Sam explains why they took on the challenge, how they plan to pull it off, and why sending cattle back onto the land was one of the best days of his life. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

G'day everybody and welcome back to the Federated Farmers Podcast. I'm Ben Chapman Smith. This is episode 98, which means we're quickly making our way towards a great milestone in our 100th episode, so keep an eye out for that in a couple of weeks' time. Now we've all heard plenty of stories about productive farmland on the East Coast disappearing under blanket pine forestry. But today's guests are doing exactly the opposite. Sam and Jimma Hane, along with Matt and Kate Long, have bought a 400-hectare forestry block and are turning it back into a working sheep and beef farm. It's a bold project involving cattle, carbon credits, collars, and a lot of hard work. But they hope it proves productive farmland can be reclaimed. Now I caught up with Sam this week. He's our Federated Farmers Meat and Wolf Vice Chair in that province. And we chatted about why these guys took on the challenge, how they plan to pull it off, and what they hope it means for the future of farming in regions like Gizbon. Let's get into it. Sam, thanks for uh joining us on the podcast today. Really appreciate it. We were having a look at it, I think you were in like our second or third podcast that we ever did a couple of years ago when we talked about the impact of Cyclone Gabriel. Thanks for rejoining us. How's life been down there in uh Gizzy?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah, no, it's a great place in the world, to be honest. Um, farming's very good, and um, we've got an amazing community. Obviously, we got we got pretty smoked with the cyclone, and you and you kind of um you start looking pretty inward and and worry about what's going on inside the farm gate. And if you'd asked me two or three years ago just post-cyclone, if we were going to buy another farm, the answer would have definitely been no. So um so a lot's obviously changed um in the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Just remind us uh we're exactly where you are farming, Sam.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

I live at Peharry, um which is directly uh 50 kilometres directly west of Gisbon. And we have another property or another couple of properties just south of where we live um that we own in partnership with another couple, Matt and Kate Long. So um, in in those two farms, we're 5050 equity, the Haynes, Gemma, and I, and the Longs, Matt and Kate.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, and we wanted to get Matt on this podcast to chat as well, but you guys are busy, he's too busy, so yeah, we we're grateful for having you on. And um, yeah, we we've got an article coming on Farmers Weekly, which includes some comments from Matt as well. But like, so the whole point of this conversation, Sam, is to find out about this uh this venture that you've just taken on. Tell us a bit about it. Why did you decide to buy this farm?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

The farm we've we've bought was um completely planted, or everything they could plant, they've planted in pine trees um relatively recently. Um I think I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but they were certainly looking at it going, if we plant it all in pine trees, then we can um go through the OIO loophole of um of selling it um as an existing um pine block. And so it was all planted, really nice farm. And then the council decided that they were gonna um put a new a couple of bridges and a bypass through the bottom edge of the farm. And the council asked us if we could graze a couple of paddocks that they just bought, and so we took some cattle up there to graze and uh just to graze the grass, and these cattle just absolutely smoked the pine trees, and it was like, wow, that's pretty cool, and we didn't think anything of it. And then three or four months later, the farm came on the market as a forestry block. We looked at it and um yeah, it took us six months to get over the line, but we finally got there um th through a uh um a fair bit of negotiation to purchase the farm with the intention of um bringing it back into um farming. And we're very fortunate in Gisbin farming is a permitted activity, so there wasn't a lot of loopholes to go through to get it. We didn't have to get a resource consent to to bring it back to farming. And the other thing was because the pines were young, there wasn't a lot of carbon credits earned, and so there wasn't a big liability on the land um that we would have had to pay back.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Can you just explain that a little bit more for people who don't understand how the ETS works?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

As pines grow, um, they sequester carbon and um and they earn um NZUs, New Zealand carbon units. And the older they are, the the faster they sequester those those those units. So in the first year it's only 0.7 a unit, so so 40 bucks a hectare is all they earn from year five to probably year 15 is when they're absolutely um pulling in the carbon pretty quick. And so um, even though for half the farm had been planted four years ago and half of it two years ago, there was about $150,000 worth of carbon credits that we have to surrender in order to take it out of the ETS. Uh, we were fortunate it had been registered as a production forest, and so um it was relatively easy to take it out of the ETS. If it had been registered as a permanent carbon sink, it would have been very, very difficult to bring it back to farming or to take it to any any any other direction but um but pure trees.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Probably a lot of people would have looked at that land now and just seen a future forest. You guys saw a farm, why because that's what we do.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

I'm not very good at a lot of things, I'm not even very good at farming, but but that is what I do. And um and Matt's the same, you know, it was his dream, Matt and Kate. Matt um grew up on the east coast um north of Gisbon, and it was his dream to um to own a farm on the east coast. It was neither of our dream to to own a forestry block, you know, and so it was easy to see. It was a great farm. As soon as we started sort of grazing it for the council and got onto it, it was like far out, there's a lot of easy country here that would suit our style of farming. Um, we've certainly modified it. Um one of the challenges we've got is that where the road's going is going straight through where the wool shed was, and so they pulled the wool shed down prior to us purchasing it. So we've we're faced with basically going as a um as a straight cattle farm because of that, because we haven't got the infrastructure to deal with any sheep. The the fences, um, you know, we we bought a farm with no house, no yards, and no gates. And so there's not an easy way to um to start sheep farming. But with the um technology of collars on cattle, and we've gone the halter way, um we can use virtual fences to hold cattle in to hammer those pine trees um and to um bring it back to farming and making money very, very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah, so with halter, I sort of I suppose you can hold the cattle in place and sort of force them to graze those trees down, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

That's right. Um I certainly think there'll still be some cleanup behind those cattle. Um we might have to um go in with a scrub bar, or with the older trees, I think they're too big to um for the cattle to graze them out. Some of those are well over um 12 feet tall, four or five metres, and so we will be um drilling them and um and injecting poison into those ones. Um and then there are parts of the farm, steeper parts of the farm, or parts that um that run into waterways that we will retire, that we will basically use um the pine trees as a cover crop to establish a native a native um regen project where we can still claim carbon at a lower rate and have a what is a really good outcome. You know, it's the council's quite been been really helpful, you know. Everybody's been very supportive, but it is really cool to be able to um go into something that's a clean slate, you know, and go, right, this would be a great space uh spot for a wetland, this would be um this would be a great spot to have a really cool native corridor, all those things we can do because um we're not constricted by by what's gone before.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

In a region that's seen a lot of farms swallowed up by uh you know, whole farm planting and forestry, how satisfying is it for you guys to be able to take one back?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

It's everybody's dream. When when um when when a farm goes into pine trees, you kind of look at that and go, oh, what if you know if I if I'd had a go at that? So um it's incredibly satisfying. It's um I've been I've been farming for a long time, and this is the um this is the best way. Getting on a scrub bar and cutting down pine trees or or poisoning pine trees is the best way I've seen of um filling the unforgiving minute in with um sixty seconds worth of distance run. You know, it's you look back at what you've done and it's like you finish your day's work tired with a smile on your face.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

I I know I asked you this uh a couple of weeks ago, but would you have do you think you would have bought the farm if it wasn't planted in pine trees?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

We didn't buy it because it was um planted in pine trees, and if a different farm had come up close by that that wasn't um plant that was already a farm, then we would certainly bought that, but it certainly motivated us to try harder to get this one because we could see the opportunity there. Yeah, we probably if if a farm had come up close by and we have tended on other farms that um that were farms, uh already existing farms, but this one it just um yeah, it was close. It certainly represents more of a challenge um than than just going straight into farming. But um at the end of it, I can see, and I think um all the all the Hanes and the Longs can see that we're gonna get a whole lot more satisfaction out of doing this than we would of taking over an existing sheep and beef property.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

How long do you expect the conversion process to take, Sam?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

We've got a few windows, we've got a hit. We've got to disestablish a lot of the um the bigger trees by the end of 2026 so that we get them out of um what would be um a permanent first rotation. We will get um a lot of a lot of it done in the next six months, basically. A lot of scrub cutting done of the um or or cutting down the young pine trees with a scrub bar and also the um chemical um thinning with the drill and fill um will mm a fair majority of it will be done by Christmas time.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Who do you get in to do that work? Like the contractors uh you know, you just bring in a crow?

SPEAKER_01 10:48

We've actually got um at the moment on the farm, one of the neighbours, their son, has has put his hand up, he's really keen to um get involved, and so he's been flat out um cutting trees down, and he's up there now um poisoning trees. And one of those um odd things that goes on, the forestry planting crews, they're gonna plant all winter, and then when they finish planting, um, you know, at the end of August when when that window sort of sort of dries up, then there's up the opportunity to to hire those guys to then do the um they do this process now, chemical thinning, where they um take out 50% of the um trees per hectare, but um we're just going one step further for for these guys and saying let's go at 100%.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

So um take the lot.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Take the lot, yeah. So um so those those will be the guys that we get. Um but we'll also um do as much as we can ourselves because um it is really satisfying.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah. So you put stock in there um what 1st of July?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah, first or second of July, yep. We um not long after we took over, we had um a few stairs, and so we've got 400 finishing stock on there at the moment. I think there might be um a hundred and uh sorry, uh 70 heifers and 330 stairs up there that are um in there grazing the grass we've got, and we're just waiting. Um we're using a lot of um halter collars, but um we're waiting for delivery on our satellite collars, and when as soon as we get our satellite collars, we'll take all of our trained stairs up there, the ones that are already trained, we can take them up there. Our problem is that um as it is at the moment we have no cattle yards, but there's also no loading facilities because there's no road onto the farm, and so we've got to drove them up there and then um make sure that we um get our our cattle yards built fast enough so that um we can adjust adjust the collars in a couple of months' time.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

It must have been pretty cool seeing the cattle go in there.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

It was one of those times in your life where you sort of think, man, I don't think I'm ever gonna see this again. As I say, we're farmers. Um it's always bloody sad when the um when the last sheep or cattle um go off a farm that's getting converted into um pine trees, and we had very recently finished grazing a property that had been sold um to forestry further up the road, and it was it was a sad day to take the last of our cattle out of there. And so it is incredibly satisfying to um to be we actually um had to swim them across the river to get them there. And so it was incredibly satisfying to to be putting cattle in there for the um specific purpose of um of grazing out pine trees.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

And you sent me some cool footage of that drone footage of of the cattle going in. So anyone listening to this, keep an eye out because we'll probably put a bit of that on social media, um figure out a way to share that with you because I know it'll be satisfying to a lot of people. Um are people in the community aware of what's going on and they must be pretty stoked if they are?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Oh, absolutely. I everywhere you go, you know, there's truck drivers, there's um obviously a lot of farmers, but all sorts of people, it's like they're just so happy that one's coming back out of pine trees because Gisman's a small community, um as as as a lot of um rural um towns are, and um everybody's sort of seen um what forestry's done to our region, but also the fact that most of the um forest enterprises the the money goes out of the region. Um, yes, sure, they employ a lot of people for the grunt work, but any of the profits is is either flows offshore or out of Gisbon, whereas um so much of the farmland is is either family owned or um or eWi owned, and so that money stays close. And so um it is really good to actually keep that money in the region. So that's that's part a part of what is um is really good. Um and so I have not heard a single bad comment. Every single person that we've spoken to has just gone, oh, that's bloody made my day. You know, you're a bloody legend, or whatever they say, um, or you know, you're a bloody idiot, but good on you. Every single person has been excited about what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

You could fence off some of the pines and then just welcome the community and at Christmas. Bring a chance or take a Christmas tree.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yep, we certainly thought that that would be um people will say it's a fundraiser, but um no, we'd certainly um look at having getting um on the community crack um community chat anybody that like a a pine tree, um a free tree. Free tree, yeah. Um, you know, it's um it's it's um the they'll they'll get just as much satisfaction as we do, you know. It's it's a really cool thing to do to be able to cut down a pine tree. So no, we're um we'd be welcoming everybody. It might not be a free tree, it might be if you take one, you've got to cut three more uh or something like that. But um no, I think everybody will probably go, yeah, we'll cut one and we'll cut ten. Uh we'll take one and we'll cut ten. So no, it's um it'll be great. It'll be um yeah, something we get the community involved in. Even yesterday, um we looked at the wetland we were planting, and it was like, right, this will be it's gonna be right beside the um the new road. Let's get the school to come and get involved in this, and they might um propagate some um some flax and some um cabbage trees, and the school can come up and plant those. So there's trees up at Tinaroda that my grandfather said he planted, and so it's kind of like you remember that forever that you planted that wetland or whatever it is. So um it is one of those things that gives young people a connection to the land, and that's you know, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Well, and a cool story to come out of uh a part of New Zealand that's you know, had you've had your battles over the last couple of years. It's so so cool to hear a great story come out of that like this. Um, great work, Sam, and um, you know, you guys are you guys are legends, you and Gemma, Matt and Kate, good on you for doing this. And I hope, you know, maybe it'll inspire a few other farmers out there to band together and see if they can um save a few more farms from going into forestry, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Absolutely, absolutely. Um we certainly haven't got the formula, um, but any intellectual property is free to anyone if they need any advice about what to do or um how to go about it, then um it would give all of us as much satisfaction um helping somebody else to convert a pine tree farm back to grass as it would um doing it ourselves, you know. So um if anybody's got any questions about it, we would love to help.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Champions. Hey mate, thanks so much for coming on and sharing that. What a great story and and all the best with it.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

No, brilliant. Thanks very much, Ben. Um it's been a very enjoyable journey so far.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Good on you, mate. Thanks, Sam.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

All right, cheers.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Thanks for listening to the Federated Farmers Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or review that really helps others to find the show. We'll be back soon with another conversation about the people issues and ideas shaping rural New Zealand. Thanks for listening.