The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced the proposal for pricing agricultural emissions in New Zealand and stated that we are going to be the first to introduce emissions pricing for agriculture and we will lead the world in climate policy.

 

Why do we either need to, or want, lead the world in becoming the first to put a price on agricultural emissions. Particularly when the science of calculating the levels of sequestration on farm, are still so far from being confirmed. Currently the pricing proposals for emissions are based on the governments modelling which ignores the sequestration from existing vegetation that falls outside the modelling criteria, even though this vegetation still sequesters carbon (as shown by the recent reports from AUT & MfE).

 

A 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 emissions pricing proposals 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 proposals from the omission of farming’s carbon sequestration ability.

 

Notwithstanding these facts our Labour government has decided to introduce these proposals that will increase costs to primary producers, reduce production, add to cost of living & inflation rate increases, which will see many farmers walk off the land.

 

I cannot understand why our government would want to introduce these types of policies at this point in time when there is a war going on in Europe which will have a huge impact on food supplies and when we are already suffering from record levels of inflation. The government’s own modelling has told us that the outcome from these policies in relation to emissions is that there will be an overall global increase as a result of them.

 

Methane is part of an ancient natural biogenic cycle. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and using the green chlorophyll in their leaves combine it with water to trap the sun’s energy as food. When plant matter is eaten by ruminants, methane is produced, which breaks down into carbon dioxide and water vapour to continue the cycle.

 

Over three-quarters of the planet’s methane comes from natural sources such as wetlands, with the balance produced by landfills, rice paddies, and livestock. Since New Zealand has only one percent of the world’s farmed ruminants the actual contribution of Kiwi livestock to methane in the atmosphere is almost too small to measure.

 

Yet as a result of the proposed tax on agricultural emissions is estimated that 20 percent of sheep and beef farmers and 5 percent of dairy farmers will be forced out of business.

 

Agriculture is New Zealand’s biggest industry, generating more than 70 percent of our export earnings and about 12 percent of our gross domestic product.

 

The impact of Jacinda Ardern’s tax on the sector will be significant. Prices of home-grown protein – including milk, cheese, and meat – will undoubtedly rise as local production falls. And our crucial export returns will decline – by up to an estimated 5.9 percent for dairy, 21.4 percent for lamb, 36.7 percent for beef, and 21.1 percent for wool.

 

There are very real concerns about the fallout from Jacinda Ardern’s radical plan to tax livestock emissions without allowing farmers to balance their ledger by claiming credits for sequestering carbon dioxide through the plant matter on their farms – including woodlots, shelter belts, riparian planting, native bush, crops, and, of course, pasture.

 

As a result, the policy will have profound and widespread consequences, far beyond the damage to those farmers who are expected to be forced out of the industry.

 

Many of their farms are likely to end up in the hands of those seeking land for carbon farming. If that happens, not only will the soil be ruined for future pastoral use, but the resilience of our rural and provincial communities will be undermined through the loss of farming families and the downstream jobs they helped to sustain. Their departure will impact heavily on farm services, meat processing plants, local schools, and the other local businesses.

 

What’s even more irrational is that the forced exit of the world’s most emission-efficient farmers will increase global emissions as other less efficient nations increase production to fill the gap.

 

Quite frankly the policy is absurd and more so given our Prime Minister is forcing this tax onto our productive sector at a time when almost 200 coal-fired power stations are under construction in Asia. In fact, the world’s major emitters of China and India have already admitted they are not planning to take serious action on reducing emissions for up to fifty years, as they prioritise the economic wellbeing of their nations by expanding essential electricity supplies.

 

Given that a day’s worth of their increased emissions will totally swamp a year’s worth of the reductions the PM is planning to impose on our agricultural base, one has to wonder about the sanity of our decision-makers.

 

So as not to create food shortages through its international drive to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nations specifically included Article 2 in the Paris Agreement, which requires policymakers to develop, emission-reduction schemes “in a manner that does not threaten food production”.

 

This specifically excludes schemes that would penalise agricultural production.

 

Given the mayhem Jacinda Ardern’s policy will create, surely ignoring this specific UN directive is not an option.

 

The government’s plan means the small towns, will be surrounded by pine trees… So all the small town cafes, car yards, schools, pubs, rugby clubs, hairdressers and supermarkets can say goodbye to business supported by the agriculture around them.”

 

A classic example of what can happen as an unintended consequence of blindly following ideological policies is seen in the recent history of Sri Lanka. It was once one of the fastest growing Asian economies and then in 2021 their President announced that the country would become organic and as a result the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers was banned.

 

This was justified by the claims that this “decision will definitely help farmers become more prosperous.” What actually happened to most people’s surprise was that within months, the volume of tea exports halved, cutting foreign exchange earnings. Rice yields plummeted leading to an unprecedented requirement to import rice and with the government unable to service its debt, the currency collapsed.”

 

Given the current situation in NZ; record levels of inflation; rampant increases in the cost of living; huge increases in waiting lists for social housing; large increases in child poverty; huge increases in the youth crime rates; huge increases in costs for housing rental; etc. there is every possibility that this proposed emissions tax could have the same type of perverse outcome.

 

The business community have become deeply disillusioned in Ardern. The latest Herald Mood of the Boardroom survey ranked Ardern as only the 12th best performer in Cabinet. Rating her out of five, the CEOs gave her 2.3. This was down from nearly 4/5 in 2020.

 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern flew to Antarctica today, and her media spin doctors will be hoping for some good photo opportunities to lift the leader’s popularity. But they will be asking a lot. It must be very important for her to be there as she had to make two attempts due to bad weather causing the first flight to return after two hours flying.

 

I wonder what the bad news is that we will hear with her being out of the country, as it seems to be a habit that whenever she is out of the country we get to hear some bad news, just as if it was planned to be released as she left.

 

Tomorrow it will be five years since Ardern was sworn in as Prime Minister. At that time she was incredibly popular, and her support kept rising, hitting its heights in 2020 but the tide has certainly turned in recent months, and there are signs that Ardern is headed for a very difficult time as Prime Minister in the near future. Economic and social factors may get much worse. And there is every possibility that Labour’s popularity will decline further, particularly in light of recent policies such as Three Waters; Co-Governance; Agricultural emissions pricing etc.

 

Her chances of re-election in 2023 must be seriously in doubt.