Mr. Charles Shier:

What we have tried to do is put forward some short rotation as a crop. As the Senator said, forestry has a long-term implication and replanting obligation so effectively the land is locked up forever, whereas with a perennial crop a farmer can come back out at the end of a contract period. In general, it is necessary to have quite good land to get the type of yield that makes the economics work. We worked alongside the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for a number of years to try to promote this. Invariably people wanted to plant the wet, boggy corner of the farm because it was not doing much for anything else so they thought they might put it into biomass. The reality of the type of species and the breeding that is going on is that they are high yielding clones but they need high quality ground to get that yield out to make the economics work. The riparian strip is an interesting one, though. It has other benefits in terms of run-off, nutrient capture and so on. That area is worth pursuing.