New Zealand falls out of love with sheep farming as lucrative pine forests spread

Many sheep farming families are facing an existential crisis as pine forestry takes over from New Zealand’s once-central industry. Photograph: Naomi Haussmann/The Guardian

Across one of the ridgelines of High Peak station, a line of sheep is on the move: gradual at first, and then in a heaving rush, an avalanche of dirty white wool heading into the valley. They flow around Hamish Guild like an eddy.

He looks across the valley, to where a slope of grassland splits in half, a velvety black expanse of pine forest sweeping over the hill.