Category: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A low-emissions future for farming will likely mean fewer cows – but farmers will struggle to diversify without financial and infrastructure support, government-funded research has found.

The research, done for the government-funded Agricultural Emissions Centre, said a lack of confidence in mitigation technology, threats to profitability, and mixed messages on science and policy were all hindering farmers’ willingness to cut emissions.

Some farmers concluded they would have to lower stock numbers to make big dents in their emissions, but the research found that diversifying to other food crops could be difficult and costly without significant support.

“This research suggests that the primary sector’s transition to lower emissions will involve fewer ruminants, new or expanded supply chains, and a need for significant capital investment,” the paper said.

The research, done by agricultural consultancies AgFirst and Perrin Ag, included funding and supporting five groups of farmers around the country to act as collectives to reduce emissions.

They had access to scientists and officials, but were left to decide for themselves how, and by how much, they would reduce on-farm emissions.

Over three to five years, the groups managed to reduce their methane emissions by two to 16 percent.

Many of them are carrying on with the work.

Methane – which is a short-lived gas but has a huge warming effect while it exists in the atmosphere – makes up roughly half of New Zealand’s emissions. Most of it comes from farms, especially the burps and breaths of ruminant animals like cows and sheep.

Earlier this year, the government ruled out an earlier policy to price agricultural emissions by 2030.

It is also set to pass legislation this week to weaken the country’s 2050 methane target, from a 24 to 47 percent reduction from 2017 levels, to a 14 to 24 percent reduction. The lower end of the range is not in line with limiting global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5C.

Changes without tech likely not enough

The government has pointed to a ‘pipeline’ of agricultural methane-inhibiting technology as crucial to achieving both the methane target and New Zealand’s international pledge to halve the country’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Some, like a small metal ‘bolus’ that is administered directly to cows and sheep, or a vaccine, could reduce the amount of methane an animal produces by as much as 30 percent.

Perrin Ag consultant Lee Matheson said the research considered what the alternatives would be in the absence of that technology.

“If we get a bolus or a [vaccine], that’s all great – but what if we don’t?

“What if we actually have to grunt through and… do that through land-use change and other stuff? That was the genesis for the work.”

The research focused on what farmers could do through farm management changes, land-use diversification, and collaboration.

Matheson said they were able to make some change within the existing system, “but there’s a point where it starts to get really crunchy”.

“It reinforced that there is likely to be a limit to which we can achieve significant emission reduction without technology helping us.”

The research investigated hemp, tōtara, blueberries and milling wheat as alternatives that were already being cultivated in New Zealand.

There was potential to scale that up, but financial and infrastructure constraints were holding farmers back at the moment, Matheson said.

“New Zealand has proven itself to be good at land-use change from time to time but it’s not as simple as saying we’re going to stop milking cows and start growing wheat,” he said.

“If it was that simple, we’d probably already be doing that.”

Many farmers viewed the switch as too risky to do alone at the moment, the research concluded.

Access to labour, improved transport and supply chains, and research and development would all be needed to support any large-scale diversification.

Matheson said he was not advocating subsidies, “but the government has a big role to play in de-risking change”.

“If significant land-use was required, which might well mean significant changes to our supply chains and value chains, then I think there is a role for government.”

Climate confusion still rife

The research also identified what it called “anti-mitigation” messages in rural media and other information farmers were accessing.

Farming lobby group Groundswell, which has been consulted by the government on changes to climate policies, is currently hosting a tour of climate change sceptic Will Happer.

Through the research programme, the farming groups were able to talk directly to climate scientists and officials to get a better understanding of the problem and the potential solutions.

They found that far more valuable than “being directed to a website or reading some collateral that appears in your letterbox”, Matheson said.

The question now was how to scale that, he said.

“It’s probably going to be pretty hard to wheel out a leading scientist to every farmer’s lounge across New Zealand.”

AgFirst consultant and co-author Erica van Reenan, who lives on a sheep and beef station in Rangitīkei and used to work as a climate policy analyst, said she and others were still “respectfully” answering the same questions they had been asked for 20 or 30 years.

“We just have to keep responding, because it’s much easier for the climate change denialists to fill the space.”

Voluntary action ‘isn’t going to cut it’

Over the course of the programme, farmers’ commitment to reducing emissions waned without external pressure to change from a pricing scheme or similar.

The paper found there was agreement across all the groups “that farmers need to do ‘something’ to respond to climate change”.

But it was clear that “voluntary action on its own probably isn’t going to cut it”, van Reenan said.

“There has to be a stick or a carrot in some shape or form.”

There were some “soft” signals from the market and banks, but they were often “quite opaque”, she said.

Even if methane-inhibiting technology proved successful, there was one big question looming.

“Who’s going to pay for this? How am I going to afford to take up this technology and implement it on my farm and do that in a cost-effective way that’s worth my while, for not necessarily any productivity gain, but purely from an emissions reduction gain?”

She stopped short of advocating for a pricing system, but said limits on emissions, similar to nitrogen leaching limits, could help to drive change.

The first sector-wide opposition to a ‘fart tax’ was in 2002, she said.

“That’s over 20 years of dedicated commitment to not having to be regulated in any way, shape or form, when the rest of society is.

“Producing food alone doesn’t give us the right to not contribute in a meaningful way. How we go about that is when it gets really complicated.”

She pressed the need for coordinated, large-scale and government-supported change.

“It can be very easy from an outside perspective to blame farmers for not doing enough but they’re trying to run businesses, look after the land, look after the water, be good to their staff, look after their animals.”

She and her husband had run the numbers for their own farm and concluded that while they had the capability to diversify into horticulture, there were “significant challenges” with access to labour and markets.

“All of the things that are beyond the farm gate that impact our decision are what make us not even go there.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand