New Zealand is losing one million heads of sheep every year, with farm-to-forestry conversions, dairy and the country’s emission trading scheme blamed for the country’s stocks dropping from 70 million in 1982 to 25 million in 2025.
It comes as the country’s farmers have launched a new campaign, “Save Our Sheep,” calling for the Luxon government to take urgent action to prevent the industry from further collapse: “Losing a million sheep a year … it’s looking like it’s going to be an industry that is not sustainable,” said Jim Galloway, president of the Hawkes Bay Farmers Federation, who spoke to Hawke’s Bay Today overnight.
According to Galloway, the head of sheep in the Hawkes Bay region alone has dropped from just under 5 million in 1990 (4,995,476) to below 3 million in 2022 (2,788,789), with the number of farms in the region dropping from 3,923 in 2002 to just 2,427 in 2022 – and that number could fall further, with the area becoming a hot spot for farm-to-forestry conversion: “Just in the last three months (alone), we’ve seen 2,800 hectares approved for forestry in the Central Hawkes Bay region,” he said. “What we are looking for is to make sure the government settings are not disadvantaging farming over forestry.”
NZ’s government is clamping down on full farm-to-forestry conversions.
Todd McClay, New Zealand’s Agriculture and Forestry Minister, said the new campaign highlighted why the government was taking action to stop the loss of productive farmland to pine: “Under the last Government, sheep and beef farms across regions like Hawke’s Bay were bought out by carbon speculators, driven by careless and unbalanced ETS settings,” he said, with reference to a new policy – introduced in December – that clamps down on conversions. “We’re not anti-forestry, but it can’t come at the expense of high-quality, safe and sustainable food production,” McClay said.
“We want to level the playing field and back farmers to grow the best lamb and mutton in the world — and sell it to the world.”
But are pines even to blame for fewer sheep?
James Treadwell, President of the NZ Institute of Forestry, said farmers are using forestry as a scapegoat: “This whole concept that all these land use changes are the result of forestry is blatantly untrue, it is mainly as a result of dairy.”
Treadwell said the amount of forestry was about the same as 20 years ago based on what is cleared, converted and planted: “There is a false sense out there, and I understand how people believe it, but it is not true,” he said, stressing that NZ’s perspective on land needs to change to diversify and maximise profits.
“The beauty with New Zealand is we have always been able to change land use, so the owner has been able to do what they want to do,” Treadwell said, adding that there there is a misunderstanding that there had been an increase in pines planted for offsetting carbon: “Most of the new trees that are being planted are being planted for timber, and yes, we will claim the carbon because we can … but they are going to be harvested and replanted.”
- To learn more about changes in sheep numbers across New Zealand, click here for Wood Central’s story from last month.
