Timber, money, and shelter: The promotion of private tree planting in New Zealand during the 1920s

Abstract

This article examines the promotion of private tree planting, in particular by farmers, by the New Zealand State Forest Service (SFS) as a solution to a timber shortage in the 1920s. While previous research has detailed the SFS’s efforts to ensure a stable supply of timber by placing New Zealand’s native forests under a system of sustained yield management and through the establishment of exotic plantations, it overlooks the importance the SFS placed on private tree plantations as a source of timber, expecting it to supply a third of New Zealand’s timber demand. In its propaganda, the SFS portrayed tree planting as a mean to improve the productivity of the farm and as a financial investment. To assist farmers, the SFS also sold trees and seedlings to farmers, a practice that met with major resistance from private nurserymen and political lobby organisations. By exploring the SFS’s promotion of private tree planting to farmers, this article demonstrates how the SFS built upon a tradition of experimental tree planting and promotion of exotic afforestation. Moreover, by examining the opposition to the policy of the SFS selling trees and seedlings to farmers, the article highlights the contesting notions of the state’s role in promoting private tree planting; whether it was a responsibility of the state, or an invasion on the private market. On a broader scale, this paper demonstrates how local environmental and political conditions shaped responses to a perceived global timber shortage.