The Farm Trees and Carbon workshop is a two to three-hour introductory workshop primarily focused on the opportunities available to farmers to generate a return from the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the One Billion Trees fund, and localised tree-planting or land-retirement funding programmes.
Alice Bradley, Environment Projects Manager for B+LNZ says farmers are able to bring their farm map to the workshops so they can identify the opportunities for planting trees or retiring land on their property.
“We want farmers to walk away from the workshop with an idea of some of the options they might like to explore.”
Alice says it is a case of planting the right tree in the right place specific to the farm. This might include poplar poles, riparian planting or shelter belts.
“No one-size fits all.”
The Farm Trees and Carbon workshop will be of particular interest to hill or high-country farmers, especially those with marginal land as it will also look at the funding available to retire unproductive land.
She says the workshop will also include a brief overview of climate change, looking at both international and national policies around this global issue.
Forest360 – a Masterton-based company providing forestry and ETS advice to landowners – will be facilitating the workshops. They developed the content with input from B+LNZ’s climate change expert, Victoria Lamb. The first of these workshops are scheduled to run at different South Island locations in late February and early March.
Alice admits that the ETS and the regulations around climate change mitigation are complex and confusing and while this workshop is designed as an introduction, if there is enough interest, B+LNZ will look to develop and more advanced follow-up workshop looking into more detail at the science and policy around climate change and carbon farming.
Find out more
For more information about when these workshops will be held in your area look at the events section on the B+LNZ website: https://beeflambnz.com/events or contact your local B+LNZ Extension Manager to request a workshop in your area.
