There's plenty of criticism of farmers and what they're doing on farm, from people who
maybe aren't getting on farm, or they're seeing really siloed ideas of what's out there, but I
think there's a lot of farmers who need to pat themselves on the back for what they're doing, and
they've got plans to move forward and be better and they're making those improvements every year.
The government have pumped a bit of money into trying to get more trees
out there through "Billion Trees" and "Clean Streams" and these sort of things.
They're making a difference. They're also changing people's mindset which is really positive,
but you can't make it happen overnight. You can't have 50 year old forest tomorrow.
We've just got to go out every year and plant trees and just improve and improve and improve
I'm Adam Thompson. I'm a farmer and a nurseryman based here in Cambridge, in the mighty Waikato.
We've got just under 200 hectares. We've been here on this farm now for just under four years,
and we've added a little bit to it in that time. We run beef breeding cows and we finish about
half of our progeny here on farm. We autumn calf here because we're quite summer dry and it allows us
to spread our animals out a bit in the winter so it's a little bit more gentle on the ground when it's wet.
Probably about 10 years ago I started growing plants for lifestyle blocks. I started growing more
and more every year, and then when we got the farm I really ramped it up because we had a lot of
areas that we wanted to put back into native bush. Then we identified that need that
farmers like ourselves wanted to retire areas but didn't have access to the right type of plants at
the right price and access to things like planting services as well. So we decided to build a business
that was going to wrap around everything to give farmers that all in one solution.
We planted this almost two years ago and there's a stream running
through here so we've gone back 10 metres plus on that side of the stream and then we've
just decided to retire this whole bit through here. Before it was just a little paddock that sort of
got bogged up in the winter and never really offered us much, but you can see it doesn't take
long to start showing a bit of volume, and in another two or three years these will
all be up and they'll be touching and and this will just be a beautiful little piece of bush.
We went from growing 25,000 plants to 250,000 plants to 500,000 plants and then
next year we'll be growing over a million. We do first generation colonizers so that's manuka, kanuka
pittosporums, flaxes, cabbage trees, things like that.
The obvious thing when you're establishing bush is to
get these species, hardy species, like we grow here, in there to create that cover,
then the birds are going to start bringing in seeds from those bigger trees,
the rimu, the kahikatea, the totara, and that stuff will start coming in.
That's how you develop a native forest over 50 or 100 years is by doing those things.
As restore native we do a lot of trapping and help people with setting up trapping
programs on their planting projects so they can protect their bush.
It benefits the trees and it benefits the birds as well.
There is this generational shift of farmers wanting to protect the land more.
There was a time when we just didn't know. My grandparents generation didn't know that
cutting down scrub and putting animals on steep hills and that was going to cause
problems for the environment and now we do, but we can't just rewrite that change overnight.
It's not about the strike or dependence of legislation it's actually about
getting out there and making incremental change every year toward that goal.
We're seeing some really awesome farmers who are really connected
with the environment. They're really connected with what their consumer
wants, and they're making a real positive change to their land.
If you just keep doing a bit every year you start driving around the farm and you're like "oh far
out haven't looked here for a few months those are popping up and my kowhai is flowering or
there's tui in my flax" and it's just constantly that reward just
gets bigger and bigger as those trees grow. You just feel right, you're doing the right thing for
the country, you're doing the right thing for the planet, you know it's fantastic. I love it.