Federated Farmers isn’t letting up in its campaign against the Emissions Trading Scheme, this time taking aim at the threat of carbon forestry to our sheep and beef industry.

The group is warning foreign forestry companies are eyeing up prime New Zealand farmland for tree planting.

President Don Nicolson says if they’re granted access, its sheep and beef farmers who will suffer.

“The potential to decimate rural towns and villages is high, if this takes off we will see ghosts towns where rural communities once stood.

"New Zealanders like having their landscape managed, they like good stewardship, but I’m very aware, speaking to people now, they don’t want the country covered in pine and conifer from end to end.”

Mr Nicolson says the Government’s clear preference for the Emissions Trading Scheme over the recently axed Afforestation Grants Scheme means the possibility of foreign companies buying up farmland for planting is very real.