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Farmers should not give in to the fears expressed at recent meetings in Co Leitrim and in other areas where there is high demand for land to be planted with trees, Green Belt chief executive John O’Reilly told the Irish Farmers Journal.
“I’ve been involved in forestry since 1989, and I’ve never caused a situation where a person left the rural economy,” he said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Virginia, Co Cavan.
Green Belt manages plantations for forestry owners and helps them acquire land when required. The company plants more than one-third of new private forestry every year.
O’Reilly said the average price for land suitable for planting is €4,500/ac, with little variation around the country.
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In his experience, farmers selling land into forestry typically dispose of “the marginal 20ac” on their farm and use the resulting cash locally to improve the rest of the farm, pay down debt, fund their children’s education or create a pension pot.
O’Reilly said Green Belt always offered neighbours opportunities to swap land so that farmers can keep better fields before planting.
When sellers do leave their farm, they are mostly elderly people who had already decided to move to the nearest town where they feel safer.
“It’s not forestry that is moving people out,” he said.
Those who invest in forestry, too, are mostly from rural Ireland, O’Reilly said.
“A lot of money from farmers going into forestry comes from CPOs,” he offered as an example.
Statistics show a large increase in planting by non-farmers since they were allowed to claim the forestry premium in 2014. Yet O’Reilly pointed out that the rule change allowed in former farmers who had taken early retirement or leased out their land, including farmers’ widows.
“It’s not as dramatic as one thinks,” he said.
“I won’t deny that another category is the more institutional investor but they are not the majority,” he added.
In response to critics who say that forestry provides fewer jobs than traditional farming in areas such as Co Leitrim, O’Reilly said this was linked to the relatively recent expansion of the industry there.
“In Co Wicklow, older forestry is more embedded into the local economy”, with harvesting, haulage and timber processing businesses living off mature forests.
He acknowledged that it would take time for forests of different ages to provide a variety of jobs in the northwest – but pointed out that forestry was already the largest employer in Co Leitrim and those jobs were compatible with part-time farming.
One year on from the establishment of Foraois, O’Reilly said Green Belt had conducted fewer than 10 transactions for the €112m forestry fund combining Finnish investor Dasos, the European Investment Bank and Ireland’s Strategic Investment Fund to target 18,000ha of acquisitions. “The focus of Dasos is to acquire forests rather than green land,” he said.
“It’s positive because it provides an outlet for those who want to sell a semi-mature asset”, especially after their Government premium expires. O’Reilly said the entry of this major player into the market had not pushed up the price of unplanted land.
Surge in forestry planted by non-farmers
Fears over disproportionate forestry planting
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