The next govt will be a National govt...

[harm_less]

Mark my words that food prices would skyrocket, no one wants that?
Even Labour doesnt want to push alot of greens policies to the table.
Carbon farming is the main issue that seriously needs addressing, Labour said they were going to fix holes in the system, but we still see land being sold to IKEA for a carbon farm.
Any land that is converted to carbon sinks should be native forest only, and only land thats not viable for food production.

ACT also has a real good policy where overseas efforts into re-forestation will count to your carbon credits, not just planting pines in NZ. I think from a global scale, this is more beneficial.
In fact I think re-forestation is more important than penalizing farmers.

Agree.  My BILs former farm in the King Country, 1600 acres, has been bought and will be planted in pines as a cabon sink for a large corporate.  The same is happening all over the KC so much so that towns like Taumarunui and Te Kuiti will die in 10 or 15 years completely.  Those pines are flagged never to be harvested - surely in that case natives would be better?  Though of course natives don't grow as fast so would take longer to get carbon credits.

The planting of forests not intended to ever be harvested is also a dead end street in that this would mean no pruning, thinning or usual forest management would be undertaken as it would serve no purpose. This takes away not only the employment opportunities that this would otherwise present but also any economical return on the trees if a decision was ever made to harvest them as the timber would have very little value and good for probably only pulp. Unmanaged pine plantings would be at risk of being smothered by weeds and eventually native species in any case so their value as a carbon sink would be reduced as a result. Or are the carbon farmers required to manage the plantings in this respect?

A diverse planting of native species would come close to pines in terms of carbon sequestration and would also generate habitat for native fauna. The monocultural and much restricted understory environment of a pine forest serves very little purpose in this respect.