If the Government policies which prioritise forestry over food production – go ahead, economists warn that without further action, rural communities may be decimated and livelihoods lost over its controversial proposals to lower agricultural emissions.

 

Farming advocacy groups, say that they expect the proposals which would see farmers pay for the greenhouse gasses livestock produce by 2025, will drive down agricultural production– New Zealand’s largest export earners – by approximately 9% for milk solids, 23% for lamb, and 65% for beef.

 

Job losses will be inevitable and it is likely that rural communities will lose facilities, when suddenly a large part of the community has to leave, to find employment elsewhere. The numbers leaving from these rural communities eventually result in other businesses having to move out of the community as they cannot sustain a business model based on the low numbers of permanent residents.

 

Supermarkets; schools; doctors; rural contractors; cartage companies etc. all end up being forced to move with the downward shift in the numbers of residents and consequently the demand for their services.

 

The flow-on effects of the proposals will likely be rural towns facing severe economic decline and eventually the creation of “ghost towns”.

 

The Government’s plans – which incentivise land-use change towards planting trees – don’t strike the right balance between environmentalism, sustainability, and meeting the country’s requirements in relation to food security.

 

We need policies that help the environment but we also need to ensure security of our food supply, economic growth and the health of our rural communities. The government doesn’t have the balance right. It is not an even playing field between forestry and food production.

 

High production costs on the farm will flow onto consumers and drive up prices at the supermarket, which will affect those on the lowest incomes the most. They are already having to try and cope with inflation at record levels which is pushing the cost of living rapidly higher whilst their wage rates are not keeping pace with the increases.

 

A reduction in food output as a result of these proposals will mean other nations with less environmentally friendly methods of production will take up the production shortfall and the emissions will more than likely increase globally, just not in our back yard.

 

Whether we like it or not and whether we agree with it or not, it is an incontrovertible fact;

 

Agriculture in NZ earns the majority of our income!!!

 

New Zealand produces enough food to feed about 40 million people but given our population is just 5 million most of this production is exported around the globe.

 

Some examples of such NZ exports are: 95 percent of the dairy it produces ($15.82billion); 87 percent of the beef ($3.7 billion); 94 percent of the sheep ($3.89 billion); 90 percent of the kiwifruit ($2.68 billion); 90 percent of the seafood ($1.6 billion); 85 percent of the onions ($0.15 billion); 86 percent of the apples ($0.91 billion); 85 percent of the wine ($2.01 billion) and 46 percent of the honey ($ 0.51 billion).

 

The export production from these items alone, resulted in an agricultural income for New Zealand in 2020 of: $31.27 Billion

New Zealand Farmers are renowned worldwide as the most environmentally efficient agricultural producers so therefore the extra production from other countries will be produced by less environmentally sound methods which will in effect mean that there will be an overall global increase in emissions rather than a decrease (even though New Zealand will see a decrease in its emission levels).

 

When people look at farming they think of greenhouse gas emissions yet farming systems are actually sequestering carbon and the carbon sequestration is totally ignored when discussing emissions from farming.

It is only fair that if the discussions are to be held around the detrimental effects of farming on the environment, then the beneficial effects should also be part of the discussion to reflect the reality of the situation and bring some much needed balance to the discussions.

 

The world needs agriculture in all its different forms to ensure the population can be fed so any discussion should be based on science and include all of the relevant information that gives a realistic starting point when discussing rules around agriculture.

 

Unlike the current situation where the beneficial effects of agriculture have been totally removed from the discussion and there is no balance.

 

The failure to include the beneficial effects, (from carbon sequestration through to security of food supply) highlights the inequity in the current discussions where agriculture is being unfairly portrayed as a destroyer of the natural environment, when in actual fact it is no worse or better than other parts of society as we see it today.

 

Even taking into account just the minimum offsetting figure produced in the MfE report of 33%, the farming industry in New Zealand has definitely been poorly served by government, in the whole discussion around GHG’s and farming’s part in New Zealand’s emission levels.

 

When we then take into account the differences between short lived GHG’s (Methane) & long lived GHG’s (Carbon Dioxide) and recognise that farming mainly produces methane, we can see even more clearly how poorly the farming industry has been treated by government through their total ignorance of the offsetting from on farm vegetation.

 

The “Great Carbon Myth” is that farming is the main cause of our GHG emissions and also that it will be the cure-all for those emissions. The current requirements on farming in relation to GHG emissions will only have the effect of endangering our country’s economy, our farmer’s economic survival and security of our food supply.

 

New Zealand emissions are approximately 0.17% of the global total in comparison to the main emitters:

 

China 28%

United States 14%

European Union as a whole 10%

India 7%

Russia 5%

Japan 3%

Korea 2%

Canada 2%

Indonesia 2%

Iran 2%

 

Food production was judged as being of such a necessity that the Paris Accord actually exempted food production from the requirements of reductions in carbon footprint based on security of food supplies.

 

In spite of AgResearch confirming our dairy farms have the smallest carbon footprint per kilogram of milk in the world at 70 percent lower than the global average, with sheep and beef farmers having the smallest environmental footprint of any red meat producer at 50 percent lower, these proposals to lower agricultural emissions effectively mean farmers will need to slaughter approximately one million cows and 4 million sheep to meet Jacinda Ardern’s excessively harsh emission targets.

 

This is in spite of the UN Paris Accord specifically requiring governments to exempt food producers from restrictions. In fact, if reducing global emissions really was the goal, instead of penalising Kiwi farmers, the regulators should be encouraging them to increase production to gain a greater share of the global market.

 

Our Government has declared a climate emergency and they talk repeatedly about leading the world in addressing GHG emissions but in fact the total effect of any action we take is less than the level of statistical possibility of error at 0.17% of the global total of GHG emissions.

 

This should not be used as an excuse for not doing anything but in reality the current proposals are worse on a global scale than if we did do nothing.

 

A recent report prepared by Auckland University of Technology, estimated woody vegetation on sheep and beef farms may be offsetting 63 to 118 per cent of the gross agricultural emissions from this sector (Case and Ryan, 2020).

 

In contrast, the findings of a recent report prepared by the Ministry for the Environment indicated net carbon dioxide removals are 63 per cent lower than the midpoint estimate of the Auckland University of Technology report by Case and Ryan (2020), equivalent to 33 per cent of the on-farm agricultural emissions.

 

This MfE report claims to provide a robust and up-to-date estimate of net carbon dioxide removals occurring on sheep and beef farmland.

 

Whilst both of these reports are related to sheep and beef farmland only, neither of them takes into account the carbon sequestration from grass pasture. Across the whole of the agricultural sector including all types of pastoral farming there is no account taken of the ability for grass pasture to sequester carbon

 

The carbon sequestration from pastoral farming is currently ignored under the ETS and surely this must mean that the basis for analysis of the GHG emissions from farming is based on flawed science and therefore gives an incorrect measure of the actual emissions from farming. This then means that farming is unfairly penalised under the ETS from the omission of farming’s carbon sequestration ability.

 

We lose many hectares of farmland each year, much of which becomes greenhouse-gas-emitting housing developments, shopping centres, roads and parking lots. But the remaining millions of hectares of farmlands nationwide represent significant additional carbon storage with at least 33% the farming emissions being offset (which is currently ignored in the ETS even though MfE has recognised this offsetting in their current report).

 

Critics find it easy to lump all greenhouse gas emissions together, including those coming from ruminants. But they are not all the same.

 

CO2 and Nitrous oxide (N2O) are considered ‘long-lived climate pollutants’ while methane from cattle is a ‘short-lived’ pollutant. Methane’s half-life is just 10 years, so it degrades in the atmosphere relatively quickly. CO2’s half-life? 1,000 years! Because it lives for so long it accumulates, and that build-up of warming continues to grow as long as we’re emitting CO2. Nitrous oxide’s half-life is 110 years.

 

The methane that our cows and other livestock put out today will be gone after 10 years.

 

Plants need carbon and water. Carbon as CO2 in the atmosphere is taken in by plants; that carbon is made into carbohydrates such as cellulose starch, or components in feed, eaten by cows, which then goes into the ruminant’s stomach and there some is converted into methane. So the carbon from methane originates in the atmosphere, goes through plants, then into animals, is then emitted, and becomes atmospheric CO2.

 

This is a biogenic cycle. It’s an important distinction.

 

Oxford University research makes it clear that biogenic methane is not the same as fossil-fuel derived methane. It is the same chemically, but the origin and fate are drastically different.

 

Fossil-fuel based carbon originates from oil, coal and gas, ancient forests and animals that died a million years ago and got stored in the ground. We extract it and burn it in factories, cars, planes, ships – and by doing so, put it in the atmosphere.

 

Instead of a cycle, this is a one-way street. The amount of CO2 we put in the atmosphere by far overpowers the potential sinks that take up CO2, like oceans and plants.

 

This is the main culprit of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. I have yet to see a climate scientist say it’s the cows who are the primary culprit.

 

If countries want accurate and realistic greenhouse gas reduction goals, they should separate biogenic methane emissions from others.