Several thousand hectares of farmland is up for grabs in Victoria, and similar land parcels have been on offer in South Australia and Western Australia in recent times. Source: ABC Online
It’s land that’s been covered by blue gums in the past 15 years or so, under the Managed Investment Schemes, which offered generous tax breaks for investors in tree plantations.
Following the collapse of those schemes in the past five years, chunks of land may now revert to grazing land.
Forestry consultant Mark Poynter said that close to one million hectares of farmland was converted to plantations under Managed Investment Schemes.
Mr Poynter said that about one third of this land was never appropriate as it was too far from the ports and had too low average rainfall.
Mark Wootton, in Victoria’s western district, is one farmer who has witnessed the rise and fall of MIS plantations.
One of his 13 landholdings is completely surrounded by blue gum plantations while others are surrounded on three sides and when he looks over the fence all he sees is very spindly trees.
Mr Wootton said that there was a huge level of interest among local farmers at a recent workshop on converting plantations to farmland, but the big question is how much any conversion would cost.
Rowan Reid is from the Melbourne University School of Land and Environment, and a keen tree grower on his farm in western Victoria.
He said the plantations that sprang up under Managed Investment Schemes in the last 15 years or so, gave agro-forestry a bad name.
He said tree growing is an important part of any mixed farming operation.
