Meet the Minister

Rory Stewart answered questions at a rural

economy conference at the end of last month
The Beaumont Hotel in Hexham
was the venue for a conference on
the rural economy convened by
local MP Guy Opperman on 30 July.
Guest of honour was Englands new
Forestry Minister Rory Stewart from
the neighbouring constituency of
Penrith and The Border.

was about to say with the simple

message: Trees are good can we
have some more, please?
He noted that the local Egger
plant employs some 600 people,
and uses 750,000 tonnes of chipwood per annum. Multipurpose
forests are a good thing, he said,
and commercial conifers grow
exceptionally well on the hills of
Proceedings began with an intronorthern Britain. A hectare of hill
duction from Guy Opperman, who
ground can produce 15 to 20
waxed eloquent on the thriving
tonnes of timber each year in perlocal economy for a few minutes
petuity, and thats on land that will
before introducing the first of a
support only one or two ewes pronumber of speakers. There were
ducing one or two lambs a year.
five-minute presentations from
The productive value of forestry
Richard Warneford of Northumbria
is quite significant. From an ecoWater, followed by Anthony
nomic point of view, the value of
Braithwaite, chair of the local farmthe forest output is far greater than
ing network, who spoke on opporit would be in farming, and upland
tunities for rural growth.
forestry employs a similar number
of people to agriculture. Globally,
Then it was the turn of Simon Hart
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the demand for wood is rising, pricof Egger, who summarised what he

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(Left to right) Rory Stewart, Simon Hart and Guy Opperman.

es are rising, and were putting
more and more strain on some of
the virgin forests throughout the
world. We should do more for ourselves in the UK, since at the
moment were something like 80%
dependent on imported wood.
Well designed forests are great
for biodiversity and theyre also
great for recreation. Forests can
help with flood alleviation and
improve water quality. Also, well
designed forests can provide shelter
for upland farmers. The productivity
of farmland can be enhanced by
planting shelter belts. Forestry and
farming can work in tandem. We
dont have to be occupying our
own silos.
Once up and running, forestry
requires very little, if any, public
subsidy. Trees are also sustainable.
Every time we cut down a tree, we
plant another one, and trees
sequester carbon.
There is a lot of capital out there,
keen to get involved in forestry at
the moment, but were letting it
slip through our hands. People
whove got the money, and by and
large its people in urban Britain,
who want to invest in rural areas,
are not investing in forestry.
Woodland cover in the north of
England is less than 10% of the
area, compared to Germany or
France, where its about 30% two
countries that are well respected for
their attractive landscape.
When man arrived in northern
Britain with his livestock, the whole
area was covered in trees. Were living in an artificially treeless landscape at the moment. The government recognises that the current
level of forest cover is not high
enough, and they have an aspiration of 15% woodland cover in
England.
Each year, the government says
it would like to see 5,000 hectares
of trees planted, although it has a
grant scheme that is designed to

www.forestryjournal.co.uk

deliver only 2,000 hectares. North

of the border, where weve already
got over 15% woodland cover, the
Scottish government would like to
see 25% woodland cover and they
have an annual target of 10,000
hectares of new woodland a year
and this year they might actually
meet their target.
The strong case for forestry is
backed up by the local councils,
who produced the document Roots
to Prosperity, which Guy Opperman
launched last year. This calls for
20,000 hectares of new forests in
northern England over the next ten
years.
At the moment there is virtually
no commercial forestry being planted in England.
Guy Opperman tells me, when I
moan about the lack of planting: If
trees are so important to Egger,
why dont you plant them yourselves?
Thats a fair question if we were
in a free market, but were not in a
free market. In a free market the
private sector would plant trees,
but the market we actually live in is
one that has a lot of barriers to forestry. There is a lot of opposition
from various organisations, and also
we live in an environment with a
very high agricultural subsidy,
which supports continued activity
of sheep farming and also underpins a high land price. If you took
away those agricultural subsidies,
we might live in a very different
world.
Weve got to remove those barriers. We in the forest industry have
got to win over politicians and the
public. Weve got to let people
know the benefits of forestry. Id
also like to see a situation where
weve got areas where there is an
assumption in favour of forestry,
which makes the application process a lot smoother and easier so
farmers can be confident that
theyre likely to get approval.

Forestry Journal 8/15

The next speaker was Glen

Sanderson of the Northumberland
National Park. Among the many
messages he wanted to get across,
he said he would like to proactively
support the rural economy wherever possible.
Next it was the turn of Rory Stewart
to give his keynote speech. This was
wide ranging, but he did return to
forestry on one occasion, when he
noted that there is huge potential
in undermanaged woodland. We
have between 100,000 and
200,000 hectares of woodland that
could be used to help Egger, and
also feed biomass boilers in a sustainable way, he said. The way to
do it is to get the detailed data,
which Defra and the FC possess, on
where those woodlands are.
It was then onto the Q&A session.
The opportunity had been given to
all delegates to fill in forms with
questions for the Minister, and Guy
Opperman noted that many of
them concerned forestry.
Indeed, the first one to be
answered was what Guy Opperman
described as a very robust and
wonderful question from Forestry
Journal: Millions of pounds are
waiting to be invested in commercial forestry. Will government
remove red tape to facilitate this?
Put ENGOs back in their box
please.
Rory Stewart required clarification. Where is Forestry Journal? he
asked, casting about the audience.
By way of explanation, we
responded: When it comes to
planting trees, there are obstacles in
the way. We were interested to hear
from the gentleman at the
Northumberland National Park that
he wishes to support the local
economy. We were at a Sitka spruce
planting in February this year. The
National Park stood in the way of
this all the way. They put obstacles
down at every step and managed
to half the size of the planting. This
was the first commercial afforestation to take place in England for
five years. Were running out of
timber for places like Egger, and its
got a long timescale, forestry, unlike
politics, which goes in five-year
cycles. We really need to get trees
in the ground, otherwise we wont
have an industry here any more. Its
very worrying. Were approaching
peak wood.
The Minister responded: This is
fundamentally a question around
land use. What the government is
engaged in doing is trying to talk to
land users, landowners, to get that
Forestry Journal 8/15

balance correct. What is going on

in forestry at the moment is partly a
lack of clarity. There are a lot of
people out there talking about
committing themselves to planting
trees, but there isnt necessarily
enough clarity about what kind of
trees people are planting.
To give you an example, you
find people very easily in a room
like this who want to plant trees,
but when you get down to the
question of what kind of trees you
are planting and where those trees
are going to be planted you get
into huge disagreements. Egger is
interested in planting basically commercial forestry for the wood processing sector. Somebody else is
interested in planting a small strip
of native woodland in the green
belt adjacent to London giving leisure benefits for suburban visitors.
We often fall over backwards to
suggest that all these things can be
achieved simultaneously, but they
cant, unfortunately. These things
are about difficult choices; theyre
about priorities. So, as Simon pointed out, the question about support
through things like the Countryside
Stewardship scheme, the questions
around the price of land, which is a
big driver on forestry, are fundamentally driven by our views, as a
nation, on what we believe is the
landscape that we love.
What do we want? Do we want
sheep farmers to be able to continue? If we take the Bailey Valley, for
instance, on the edge of Kielder, it
is a classic example of the dilemmas
that youre facing all the time. Its
grade 3/grade 4 agricultural land,
very, very heavy clay soil, very, very
heavy rainfall. Its poached probably
two years out of four. They get
about one good year out of five.
People are really pushing to plant
trees up that valley. At the same
time, the farmers who live in that
valley are living on 100/120 acre
farms. Theyre keeping 40 sheep,
50 cows, and yet some of those
families have been there unbroken
since they were settled in that valley by Richard III. In other words,
they have been sitting there since
the fifteenth century in farms of a
very similar size. If you were to suggest to them that they should give
up their farms and that trees should
move in over their farms, they
would be extremely resistant to
this.
Im not, I guess, coming up
with a magic wand here, continued Rory Stewart, except to say
that Simons instinct is right. If we
are to have a vigorous, flourishing

sector of commercial forestry, we

need to begin by winning an argument about what we wish the
British landscape to look like. For
example, theyre talking about doubling the number of trees in the
Lake District National Park, taking it
from about 5% to 10%. Again, the
question that needs to be asked is,
Are those trees going to be of any
use to Simon? or are they going to
be the planting of small strips of
native woodland along becks coming down the fellside, which, I
guess, will be of not much use to
you.
Unlikely to be harvested, said
Simon Hart.
Exactly, continued the
Minister, so I want to open this up,
and Im going to say that, if this is a
conversation that you in
Northumberland are interested in
driving, and I would have thought
that you are a good place to drive
it, given that you have Kielder here,
then I think we need to look at the
individual questions posed by
Forestry Journal. What is it that is
happening in the National Park?
Why was that planning process difficult? What are the obstacles that
owners actually face in planting this
kind of forestry? How do we win
over environmental NGOs?
For example, is it possible to say
to them, look, its all very well you
saying that you dont like commercial forestry in Britain, but in the
end were still consuming the same
number of trees. All youre actually
doing is pushing the commercial
growth over to another persons
country, and presumably all the
environmental problems that youre
grumbling about are happening
somewhere else where these trees
are planted. Is that really what you
want? Is that in the end a really sustainable, environmentally responsible approach to the world, or
would Britain like to play its role in
growing some of these trees themselves, provided we grow them in
the right way?
The best way of pulling this off is
to find an area of the country which
is prepared to really have those
conversations. It would be really
nice to see Simon sit down with
George Monbiot in
Northumberland with a particular
patch of ground and actually fight
this through, talk it through and try
to get some kind of agreement.
Otherwise were going to be in the
horrible kind of world that I feel
were in all the time, where were
going to have two completely different conversations going on and

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Im acting on some weird Chinese

whispers between groups without
either of them understanding the
other.
The Q&A session then proceeded
to other questions, mainly on topics
other than forestry. However, on
the question of rewilding, Rory
Stewart again talked of upland
sheep farming and made it clear
that it has a special place in his
view of land use issues.
Having described the way the
local area was cleared of trees, certainly by Roman times, and probably long before that, he stated that
while rewilding might take place in
certain areas, there also needs to be
space for sheep.
I feel that upland sheep farming
is one of the most precious inheritances and connections to our past.
I feel very, very strongly that when
people come up, for example, from
the south of England, to visit this
area, one of the things they love
about this area is that they see in
small farms a connection to what
they believe about Britain. Ramblers
like, in certain areas, to have fellsides that they can walk over, which
are eaten by sheep. We also, I
believe, have a responsibility to
understand that some of the
upland, unproductive ground, if it
isnt used for forestry, is quite well
used for sheep, because the inputs
into it are essentially environmentally friendly.
For all these reasons, Defras
vision is to try to create space for
multiple uses. Were not ideologues.
We dont go round saying we want
the whole thing rewilded, or we
want the whole thing covered with
trees or the whole thing devoted to
sheep farming.
There was time for one more question on forestry. In a project commissioned by the FC, the new
observatory at Kielder Water was
built with larch imported from
Siberia. Why, in the middle of the
largest forest in northern England
was this allowed? Please make sure
such things dont happen again!
demanded the questioner.
Rory Stewart wanted to know
whether this was really true. An
explanation came from a member
of the audience, who said that the
decision was taken to use Siberian
larch because of its longer life
expectancy.
This question came from Andrew
Heald of Confor, who was frankly
less than impressed with the explanation he received.

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