Conifers made up almost three-fifths of all new forestry planted in the State over 2022, the Department of Agriculture’s forestry report for 2022 shows.

In Leitrim, a county where one in every five acres are already under forestry, this figure rises to 81%.

The new forestry report also confirms that farmers are planting less forestry than non-farmer landowners.

This afforestation skew towards non-farmer afforestation is the continuation of a trend which shows up over the previous five years’ figures.

In 2022, only 76 farmers planted forestry, while 232 non-farmers did so.

Farmer planting represented an area of 520ha, while the non-farmer figure represents 1,754ha.

In contrast, in 2017, there were more farmers that planted than there were non-farmers - as there had been since the early 1990s.

Three in every five people receiving yearly forestry payments were aged 60 or more in 2022.

Spend and carbon

The total forestry expenditure of the Department came in at €74m, including forestry grants, annual landowner payments and grant aid for forest roadways.

Soil carbon makes up 78% of the 323m tonnes of carbon stored in the country’s soils, according to the Department’s report.

Above-ground biomass accounts for a further 16.3% and below-ground biomass a further 3.8%, to give an overall tree carbon allocation of one-fifth of that held in the forests.