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# Farmers say govt failed to stop carbon forestry conversions
- URL: https://goodoil.news/farmers-say-govt-failed-to-stop-carbon-forestry-conversions/
- Published: 2025-08-20T01:10:13.000Z
- Updated: 2025-08-26T23:03:26.000Z
- Description: "...they blew it.”
- Author: Centrist
- Tags: News

Summarised by [Centrist](http://www.centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news)

**Federated Farmers and Beef + Lamb New Zealand say the Environment Select Committee has missed its chance to stop productive farmland being lost to carbon forestry.**

**A proposal to tighten exemptions allowing newly converted land to enter the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) after 4 December 2024 has not addressed the main problem, according to Richard Dawkins, chair of Federated Farmers’ meat and fibre section.**

“The government had a chance to stop our productive farmland and rural communities being completely overrun by pine trees – and they blew it,” he said.

The select committee recommended a 25% limit on how much farmland can be registered for carbon credits, but it only applies to the best-quality land, known as classes 1 to 5\. That’s not where most conversions are happening. Richard Dawkins from Federated Farmers says just 12% of carbon farms have gone on that type of land. “The remaining 88% of conversions have been on classes 6 and 7,” he said. “That’s where most sheep and beef farmers operate, and they’re left with almost no protection under the new rules.”

Beef + Lamb NZ chair Kate Acland said the failure to fix land class rules means “the door \[is\] wide open for the continued wholesale conversion of productive sheep and beef farmland into carbon farms.”

[**Read more over at Rural News**](https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-general-news/select-committee-land-conversion-report?ref=goodoil.news)

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