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Showing posts with label wood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wood. Show all posts

Sunday, June 21, 2015

New Zealand loses 100,000 hectares to dairy expansion


Wood Processors and Manufacturers Association, New Zealand has allayed fears that dairying boom expansion is eating into forest blocks and threatens wood security, as it claims to have lost 100,000 hectares of forest land in the last few years to dairy farming, reports NaijaAgroNet.
The Board Chairman of the Association, Brian Stanley, in a forum of over 40 industry experts and community representatives at the Trailways Hotel, lamented that forestry and wood products producers were in a far tougher market than the agricultural sector, stating that it's not a wall of wood any more, but a hedge.
Expressing his dismay, Stanley established that although the nations wood industry offers a solution to the dairying's carbon emission problem but its being hurt by the dairying's expansion and stressed optimism that wood processing and manufacturing - the country’s third largest export sector at $2.5 billion a year, stands to risk its position.
Nationally the industry, as gathered by NaijaAgroNet, produces 70 per cent of its energy needs by burning waste wood, saving $1.1 billion annually, and Landscapers has estimated a $12 billion  "environmental value" of  forests made up of components such erosion control, nutrient recycling and soil formation.
Though the industry sees itself as the answer to dairying's need to offset carbon production and a solution to climate change; the association frowns at the level of government support regional producers get compared to other regional primary industries that didn't provide similar numbers of jobs. 
"Nor do they provide the same level of water quality or climate change control that the forest growing and wood processing industries are renowned for." Stanley stated.
Simultaneously, Association Chief Executive, Jon Tanner, also pointed out that the competition internationally, against governments owning 85 per cent of the world's forests and associated processing and setting their own rules, puts the organization on a tough unbalanced scale in the agricultural market.
Tanner submitted that the industry has a highly productive and efficient workforce, and a great opportunity as a solution to climate change, but faced major supply problems caused by logs being exported to China, and dairy conversions swallowing forest land. 
"We are an incredible industry building economic, social and environmental capital simultaneously. Trees are the pollution solution." He said.
The association NaijaAgroNet learnt was formed through a merger of the Pine Manufacturers' and Wood Processors' Associations and is holding a series of gatherings around New Zealand to tell what it says is a fantastic story of innovative and sustainable production providing thousands of jobs in the regions.
Daniel Nsolibe/GEE
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Saturday, May 9, 2015

Adopt Forest and Land-use policies to alleviate global hunger – IUFRO

International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), at a United Nations Forum on Forests in New York, called on countries with big forest-dependent population to adopt national policies and land-use strategies that support the planting of multi-functional trees to provide food, timber, fuel wood, medicine and a host of environmental services that could access safe nutritious food for all, NaijaAgroNet reports.
The Union, NaijaAgroNet gathered, estimates that some 805 million people – one in nine citizens of Earth – are undernourished, primarily in Africa and Asia. At the same time, between 1.2 and 1.5 billion people worldwide depend on forests for all or most of their diet and livelihood.  
Stepha Mcmullin, social scientist and member of the Union report’s Authors, also concurred that forests and tree-based farming systems such as agroforestry can complement agricultural production to ensure greater food security and better nutrition for some of the world's most vulnerable communities.
“If you're familiar with shade-grown coffee, then you have an idea of what agroforestry is all about. By planting fruit trees and other useful species, selectively weeding and otherwise managing the forests as intensively as any farmer might tend their fields and rotate their crops; people all over the world have created gardens that resemble natural forests in many ways, including providing suitable habitat for a diverse array of flora and fauna.” He said.
McMullin who, NaijaAgroNet gathered, advocated that forests and tree-based systems also benefit people indirectly, sited an instance in the Sahel region of Africa, noting that by planting trees, poor farmers have turned millions of acres of what had become semi-desert by the 1980s into more productive land, where trees now account for 80 per cent of average household incomes in the region, largely through shea-nut production.
Coordinator of IUFRO’s Global Forest Expert Panels initiative, Christoph Wildburger, told NaijaAgroNet that tree-based farming can help prevent climate change calamities, which is also a threat, not just to the productivity of agroforests but to conventional agricultural operations, as well.
“Large-scale crop production is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events, which may occur more frequently under climate change. Science shows that tree-based farming can adapt far more better to such calamities. We know that forest already play a key role in mitigating the effects of climate change. It should also be made very clear that they also play a key role in alleviating hunger and improving nutrition.” He said.

Ultimately, lack of community control over forests and, of course, deforestation could limit the abilities of forests to enhance food security. Forest management in most countries is fragmented across different governmental agencies and administrative jurisdictions.

Daniel Nsolibe /Ed, Ops.


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