26 minute read
Opinion
From the Editor Thinking outside of the box
Bryan Gibson Managing editor
ROCKING up to a vending machine for your daily red meat protein fi x is probably not something many New Zealanders would consider.
Here, the vending machine is home to chocolate bars and cans of Coke, but not a lot else.
In other parts of the world, though, they’re ubiquitous.
Japan, for instance, has one vending machine for every 23 people.
So a new initiative by Beef + Lamb NZ, Silver Fern Farms (SFF) and Alliance to put healthy meals made with grass-fed NZ red meat into Pure Box vending machines in Shanghai might be the perfect way to reach a larger section of this massive market.
China and south Asia has long been our most valuable export market, and their cooking preferences and tastes have meant we’ve altered the cuts we process and export there. The point of sale has also altered.
Some years ago a SFF executive appeared on a shopping show on live TV and promptly sold 12.5t of beef in 30 minutes.
Food is a funny thing, with conversations about its future often centred on a view that’s shaped by a person’s upbringing and culture.
It’s the old saying, we don’t know what we don’t know.
A while back many were a little revulsed by the thought of adding cream cheese to tea.
But if you do the research, you get the results, and in 2018 Fonterra sold 200 million tea macchiatos.
Some people don’t like eating tofu, but it’s been a staple protein in many countries for more than 2000 years.
Now, the thought of eating alternative proteins leaves a bad taste in some mouths, but in cultures where meat has never been the dominant protein, who’s to say how people will take to it?
All the research points to growing wealth leading to a growing taste for animal proteins in developing economies.
Our export sector has met that demand – and our farmers, and the wider economy, have enjoyed the returns.
Research also shows us that the ways in which those proteins are grown in many parts of the world are unsustainable and many of the established, wealthy nations are reconsidering the quality and amount of red meat they eat.
It’s a really tricky challenge to navigate, but our red meat processors have made the right call.
And what’s the plan?
Reinforce our position as a low-impact, sustainable producer of protein. Produce the data and traceability to back up that claim.
Do the research in-country to establish what people there want to eat, how they make that decision and where they want to buy.
It’s hard work – much harder than loading up the boat with lamb shoulders for the Christmas dinner in Yorkshire, or with ground beef for the grill in Texas.
It’s a big, big world, and success will come not from trying to mould it to your own tastes, but by adding what’s good about our food production systems to the tastes that have been centuries in the making.
What’s important is to have an open mind and be open to the opportunities all this culinary diversity offers.
Letters of the week Price signals, not virtue signalling
Jason Barrier
Waikato
IN A recent Farmers Weekly article, “Wake up and smell the carbon, NZ” (September 19), PwC’s Dr Victoria Hatton announced that our “siloed mentality” was impacting our “early mover advantage” and suggested New Zealand farmers are at risk of becoming “laggards” in carbon marketing. This was cheered on by your own editorial, which warbled luxuriously about more “silos” and “social licences” and postulated that because PwC had offi ces in 155 countries it must have a “pretty good view of global trends”.
That may well be so – but the missing link in both these articles was hard consumer research and an actual price signal to farmers.
Farmers like myself are fed up with being browbeaten by our own media, politicians and endless consultants who claim to be able to see some sort of invisible market that we are in grave danger of missing out on if we don’t all jump on the carbon tax bus, irrespective of cost.
If that were so, and this market was really so large, surely our own meat companies would already be marketing all our meat as low carbon, given the AUT study from 2020 that found that on average 90% of emissions are sequestered by woody vegetation on sheep and beef farms?
If it were so, how is it that Brazil, where there is NO discussion of a methane tax, is the world’s largest beef exporter, can export seven times as much beef to Europe, twice as much to China, and will grow its domestic herd by 11 million this year?
If it were so, how is it that in December 2020 the European Commission released the Eurobarometer survey on European Union citizens’ expectations related to food, which showed that “carbon footprint” did not rank in the top eight considerations for European food consumers? Heaven only knows what the Chinese lady who purchases our mutton fl aps thinks.
To paint a picture of NZ farmers becoming “laggards” is, quite frankly, appalling, given we already produce vast quantities of
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In my view ... Forestry is a bridge, it’s not a band-aid
Colin Jacobs
Lewis Tucker general manager
THERE has been a lot of comment over the past week about how forestry cannot become a substitute for emissions reductions.
As a leading manager of a forestry venture for both carbon and timber, and an enterprise delivering valuable outcomes for the agricultural and horticultural sectors, Lewis Tucker wholeheartedly agrees with this. To be crystal clear: forestry is not the solution to our climate crisis. It never has been.
The only way we will stave off the worst impacts of unmitigated climate change is through material, sustained and rapid emissions reductions. We either cut our emissions or we do not. There are no shortcuts.
Forestry is New Zealand’s bridge to a low-carbon economy. It buys the country’s emitters and policy makers a bit of time to get there. While there are incentives to plant forests to build that bridge, similar incentives are now required to encourage reducing gross emissions.
There is nothing new in any of this, so we have been a bit surprised at the talk around how forestry is just an enabler to “plant and pollute”. It isn’t and it doesn’t. The Climate Change Commission has modelled that New Zealand needs 25,000ha of new exotic forestry per year for at least the next decade to store carbon while our country adjusts. The forestry industry is delivering this.
If we plant forests but do not cut emissions, then we fail. The price of carbon is sending strong signals to emitters as to the economic impact of what that might look like. Our weather is sending strong signals to all of us as to what the environmental impact is becoming.
The imperative around emissions reduction is becoming a moral one and is becoming linked to organisations’ social licence to operate.
Again, there should be no surprises in any of this.
Some elements of how forestry is being delivered are unpopular, and with good reason. “Permanent pine” or “lock up and leave” exotic forests are a short-term stopgap that simply passes the problem to future generations. We also struggle to understand why anyone would want to plant an exotic forest and not seek to harvest the timber, leaving a huge amount of value on the table.
The timber that is produced from the forests that are planted can be exported or utilised towards a low-carbon economy, either through domestically produced and processed building materials or as an alternative fuel source.
Responsibly planted, wellmaintained rotation forestry on economically marginal farmland can improve farmers’ incomes, release capital for development of more productive parts of the farm and improve environmental outcomes.
It is a fact that we will not come even close to meeting our climate change commitments without exotic forestry for the next 20-30 years. We need to prioritise our focus on what more we can do to incentivise a low-carbon economy.
A simple policy change that would allow exotic forestry to absorb carbon over a longer rotation period and deliver geographically diverse sources of timber could halve the area that New Zealand needs to plant in forests and help ensure that only the land ideally suited to forestry ends up in trees. A longer rotation period would also better align NZ’s forestry sector with the country’s Net Zero 2050 targets and encourage a reduction of “lock up and leave” carbon farming.
The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is our primary market mechanism to price emissions and is a stepping stone in achieving emissions reductions. Contrary to a lot of the recent comment, it has ensured that there is now a price on pollution. The right investment signals are being sent, short-term sequestration is being delivered and refinement around the policy edges is helping drive the right behaviour.
The ETS and forestry are the two props driving the climate change scrum. Incentives for low emission vehicles have added momentum, and prioritising government investment in green initiatives is positive – but more of a policy shove in the form of emissions-reduction incentives is now needed.
Transport will electrify, industry is reducing dependence on fossil fuels, energy will become increasingly renewable, and agriculture will continue to become more efficient. All require the right incentives, from both the market and policy makers.
It is debatable as to whether any of this shift is occurring fast enough but the forestry bridge to enable decarbonisation to occur is being built on time.
If we act with haste and further incentivise gross emissions reduction, that bridge will not need to be as long.
GOOD FOR THE TREES: Lewis Tucker general manager Colin Jacobs says forestry buys the country’s emitters and policy makers a bit of time to get to a low-carbon economy.
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low-carbon meat, and we are the only country in the world having a methane tax inflicted upon us. I don’t doubt there are niche markets opening up for low-carbon meat; however, if such virtue signalling was sufficiently well paid by our meat companies, NZ farmers would be “chafing at the bit” to take advantage of it.
My challenge to Dr Hatton and yourself is: rather than speaking in riddles about “silos and social licences”, show us the evidence – show us the money.
Plant it all in pines and have done
Ron Frew
Ohakune
DR VICTORIA Hatton, featured in Farmers Weekly on September 19, suggests that New Zealand agriculture set targets to be netzero carbon rather than carbon neutral, but nowhere that I could discern did she offer any concrete measures as to how that might be achieved.
That NZ agriculture has sought to distinguish between long- and short-lived greenhouse gases is not siloed thinking but a legitimate distinction that needs to be a part of any pricing regime.
Likewise, the fact that NZ agriculture produces food with one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world has to be recognised and rewarded rather than punished.
Those of the persuasion that reducing the ruminant population of NZ and banning all artificial fertilisers is going to save the planet might to consider the likely consequences of much higher food prices and, in parts of the world, mass starvation with social and political upheaval.
Equally delusional is the business class traveller flying Air NZ to New York who purchases carbon credits to offset the emissions of his flight.
Perhaps if we planted the whole of NZ in pine trees Air NZ could be net carbon zero for the 36 years that pines sequester carbon!
The current adolescent mass hysteria conflating cows with climate catastrophe – should it spread to the adult population – could result in just an outcome.
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Male meat theory gets up in my grill
Alternative view
Alan Emerson
Semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
IWAS sent a newspaper cutting with the headline “Ban meat-eating men from sex, animal rights group urges”.
Unsurprisingly, the animal rights group was PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
To be fair it was the German branch of the organisation, although the Kiwi and Australian crews have since agreed with it.
The cutting arrived at lunchtime so I immediately gave my sausage to the dog and removed my fur collar. You can never be too careful in matters of this importance.
The article was fascinating and the view somewhat extreme, even from a fringe group like PETA.
PETA claimed that “devouring schnitzel and sausages is a symptom of the toxic masculinity that is killing the planet”.
That was difficult to take seriously. If Russia’s President Vladimir Putin started a nuclear war that would kill the planet, but eating sausages and schnitzel?
Also, according to PETA men
are responsible for 41% more greenhouse gas emissions than women largely because they consume more meat.
I have several problems with that, the first being how would PETA have the faintest idea?
The second is to ask, respectfully of course, who did the research, and finally to suggest that I know many women who can eat meat with the boys. I didn’t realise PETA was so sexist.
PETA called on women to go on a sex strike to save the world.
That also begs more questions than answers. What happens if the male is a vegan and his sex partner is a rabid meat eater? Should he withdraw his favours, in the interest of saving the planet of course?
What should happen if both partners consume the same amount of meat? Should they ignore the health of the planet and just go at it?
It also concerns me that PETA is ignoring the LGBT community. They eat meat and have sex too.
Apparently PETA claims everyone knows the culprits: “The suburban fathers with beer bottles and barbeque tongs sizzling sausages on their grill.”
I can remember seeing a photo of Sir John Key and Prince William with beer bottles, barbeque tongs and sausages on the grill. Were they destroying the planet? Should someone tell the King?
PETA also told the world that “grill masters believe they have to prove their masculinity to themselves and their fellow species through their consumption of meat”.
That was followed by the PETA king hit: “Now there is scientific proof that toxic masculinity also harms the climate.”
Well, well. I know a lot of men who prove their masculinity in many ways. Eating meat isn’t one of them.
If there is scientific proof that masculinity harms the climate, let’s see it. The word “toxic” means poisonous. How can masculinity be poisonous?
My dictionary defines masculinity as “characteristics being typical or appropriate to a male, unwomanly”. That’s a threat to the planet?
They also want a 41% meat tax for men. How would a supermarket know if its meat was for a male or female? And just putting it on men would be sexist.
Not to be outdone, a female Green MP branded the barbeque “a ritual that reeks of virility, male meat-eating compulsion and power over women”.
You’d want a steak and a beer after reading that. How can a barbeque reek of virility and power over women? You barbeque to cook food to eat and that includes vegetables as well as meat. It has nothing to do with virility and how can it encourage power over women?
You can almost hear someone saying, “I want to have power over women, let’s have a barbeque.”
The other issue PETA totally ignores is the women’s feelings, which we sensitive new age farmers (SNAFs) know are vitally important.
You can only imagine the conversation: “Darling I’m in the mood tonight so can you please just eat vegetables?”
What PETA is also ignoring is the fact that a human body needs meat to have a balanced diet and live life to the full.
At the Primary Industries Summit in Auckland, United States nutritionist Diana Rodgers said we need animals in the food chain, and that it was difficult to be healthy as a vegan, which I obviously totally agreed with. And there goes the problem. I N THESE troubled times, its difficult to know what to worry about the most.
The covid-19 pandemic shoved most issues down the ladder but as it abates some of those old worries have resurfaced.
Global warming, climate change, methane emissions, pine trees taking over good sheep and beef land, polluted waterways, Three Waters, legislative change overload, the woes of the All Blacks, inflation, a waterlogged farm, and a myriad other issues have all been competing in my mind for dominance.
Which ones should I worry about more so that I can push the other things down to some place where I can forget about them?
Then another one comes up that makes all of these seem like mere trifles.
Nuclear war and mutually assured destruction of the planet.
Excellent. Who cares about Three Waters, faced with this?
I’ve been to Hiroshima and spent a couple of very reflective and emotional days visiting the memorials and walking solemnly with many others from all around the world through the sombre museums.
The blatant and obvious message there is that this should never ever be allowed to happen again.
No one in their right mind who visits that place or even those who haven’t been there would argue against this.
Yet the madness of the Cold War saw a massive increase in testing of these evil weapons and stockpiles of nuclear warheads.
Over 2000 nuclear tests were conducted, with the United States doing over half of these, the Soviet Union more than700 and the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea responsible for the balance. Israel may not have tested but is thought to have 90 nuclear bombs.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed that this new weapon worked to deadly effect in 1945, so you would have to wonder why they continued to test at this scale to finesse these bombs.
In 1955 there were 3000 nuclear warheads held, as it happens, by the five permanent members of
A female Green MP branded the barbeque ‘a ritual that reeks of male meat-eating compulsion and power over women’. You’d want a steak and a beer after reading that.
SINS OF THE FLESH: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are targeting men who eat meat. Photo: PETA.org
The unhealthy vegans of PETA are obviously insanely jealous of sexually active meat eaters and want everyone on the same page and that’s the reason for their stupidity.
On the subject of meat I’ll leave the last word to the late, great rugby player Sir Colin Meads. He was highly critical of the pasta dishes modern-day All Blacks are fed, and commented: “In my day we had a steer in the changing room and when we took the field only the horns and tail were left.”
We won a lot more tests back then and our birth rate was impressive too.
We thought we had worries, but the list just went nuclear
From the ridge
Steve Wyn-Harris
Central Hawke’s Bay sheep and beef farmer: swyn@xtra.co.nz Continued next page
Getting hard to see the good for the trees
The braided trail
Keith Woodford
MD at AgriFood Systems kbwoodford@gmail.com
IN A RECENT article, I wrote that carbon credits are not created equal. This inequality is now leading to game-playing and confusion across society. Terms like “greenwash” as the carbon equivalent of a whitewash are increasingly heard and there is increasing talk of “hot air” carbon claims.
Since writing that article, I have been wrestling with the challenge of further deepening my own understanding of how the carbon game is being played. It is a game where different players are playing by different sets of rules, as are the certifying referees. Many of the certifying rules are far from transparent.
Here in this article my focus is specifically on the rules surrounding sequestration that removes carbon from the atmosphere. That leaves other aspects of the carbon rules for another time.
In New Zealand, the dominant sequestration rules to date have been those of the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). However, that could now be changing with the emergence of voluntary certification schemes with potential for local and international certification outside of any official system.
To understand the basic differences between alternative sequestration systems, it is necessary to understand “additionality” versus “business as usual” in relation to “baselines”. Those three terms are where most of the complexity and potential confusion lie.
Within the NZ ETS, the key baseline is December 31 1989. If either a native (indigenous) or exotic (introduced-species) forest was in existence before that date, even if at only an early stage of regeneration, it is not eligible to earn official NZUs within the ETS. The supposed logic of this is that the ongoing growth in these forests is “business as usual” consequent to decisions that were made pre-1990, when no one was thinking about carbon credits.
Nearly all of the ETS-registered forests are introduced species, which reflects a simple reality that establishment of native forests is a long and expensive process.
When I hear people saying that these new forests should comprise native species, my response is to suggest they come up with the money if that is what they wish to happen. There is a need to recognise that planting natives is not a paying proposition and that is why it is unlikely to happen on any scale unless publicly funded. Incidentally, according to the Ministry for Primary Industries website, we already have 10.1 million hectares of forest in NZ of which 8 million hectares are native forests. That means that 30% of NZ’s total land area of 26.8 million hectares is already in native forests.
The exception in relation to native forest establishment costs is where regeneration is feasible based on existing seed stocks in the soil.
In recent weeks I have become aware of an example where a farmer has been able to register a regenerating native forest into the ETS in a situation where some elements of the regeneration commenced prior to 1990. At that time there were remnant groves of native trees in the gullies. However, the farmer and his consultant have been able to demonstrate that this area has increased considerably since 1989, and that there is a contiguous area of new forest approaching 100ha, defined by squiggly lines that exclude the pre-1990 regeneration.
There are also other properties where this is occurring and there may well be many other farms where this is a possibility.
However, there are also many landholders, and sheep farmers in particular, who have regenerating native forests that are failing to meet the ETS criteria. Some big questions need to be asked as to whether the pre-1990 baseline is being applied in a way that is unduly tough for long-life regenerating forests.
In relation to the pre-1990 baseline issue and its fairness, there is an important distinction to be made between exotic and indigenous forests. For example, NZ has approximately 1.4 million hectares of exotic pre-1990 forests that are into their second, third and even fourth rotations. Logic suggests that unless there are changes to rotation length, then there is no net sequestration occurring in relation to the overall amount of carbon within these forests.
In contrast, almost all regenerating indigenous forests are still relatively early in the regeneration cycle and will be sequestering carbon for some hundreds of years, even if that commenced pre-1990. Just because that regeneration started before 1990, is that a valid reason to exclude acknowledgment of the sequestration that is occurring?
It is with some surprise that I have learnt in recent months that although landholders cannot claim credits for these pre-1990 regenerating forests, the government does include the assessed net growth in these forests within its nationally determined contribution (NDC) and this is reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The argument is that because all of these forests are managed – in the main by the Department of Conservation – net sequestration is a valid
contribution to the NDC.
Interesting questions then arise as to whether private landholders should be able to claim credits within the ETS for the indigenous forests that they too are managing. Also, if credits were available, this would give a clear incentive to undertake more management by fencing and other methods of predator control, leading to additional sequestration.
It is the absence of credits within the ETS for genuine sequestration in pre-1990 indigenous forests that is creating space for voluntary sequestration schemes to develop. The CarbonCrop example that I referred to in my last article illustrates this point. In the case of CarbonCrop, the rules of the game as set out within their website do seem explicit.
I am advised that the early sales of CarbonCrop units for native forests have been at $50 per tonne of sequestered carbon. This is still early days and the price could go in either direction. CarbonCrop currently requires a landholder to register a minimum area of 20ha of native forest, with this no doubt reflecting that small areas become too expensive to justify the measurement, registration and administration costs.
One thing that has changed markedly in the past few years is the ability to measure growth in established forests using a combination of GPS and artificial intelligence systems including inbuilt learning capacity. Precise measurement of growth in pre1990 forests is now feasible from “eyes in the sky” in a way that was totally infeasible when the ETS was established.
My big concern is the need for standardisation both of the overarching methodologies (rules of the game) and the accuracy of measurement with different measuring techniques. Linked to this, it is important that carbon claims are demonstratively not greenwash. I note that there is an international non-governmental body called Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (ICVCM) working towards this. The rules of the game for carbon markets extend well beyond sequestration, but sequestration is an important component.
As for non-indigenous trees, I see the possibility of a voluntary scheme also emerging for post-1989 exotic forests. This could be in response to government restrictions on access to sequestration within the ETS as advocated both by Climate Change Minister James Shaw and Climate Change Commission chair Dr Rod Carr.
In regard to the ETS, the government can do whatever it likes. However, if landowners are restricted from registering their exotic forests in the ETS, then the alternative of a voluntary scheme may well have appeal. The question then becomes whether overseas buyers would see merit in purchasing such units, with the units then credited to the buyer rather than NZ’s NDC. We do indeed live in interesting times.
UP A TREE: Voluntary sequestration schemes create opportunities but also confusion – in an already confusing regulatory landscape, says Keith Woodford.
Landholders cannot claim credits for these pre-1990 regenerating forests, but the government includes the assessed net growth in these forests in its nationally determined contribution and this is reported to the UN.
Continued from previous page
the UN’s Security Council.
More than enough to destroy most life forms on the planet.
However, 10 years later there were 37,000 and by the late 1980s there were over 60,000 of these evil things.
North Korea has been the only nation to undertake testing in this century so welcome progress has been made with the various agreements banning testing.
With the demise of the Soviet Union and the nuclear disarmament treaties that followed, there are now 13,000 or so nuclear warheads with Russia and the US holding around 6000 each.
The alarming development now is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sham ballots in those eastern Ukraine provinces, which will mean he will annex them and then claim them as part of Russia. He will say any attacks on these areas by the Ukrainians in their efforts to take them back is an attack on Russian soil.
When Putin hints that Russia is prepared to use nuclear weapons if he feels his country is under threat, it needs to be treated seriously.
He may be deluded and isolated, but he is justifiably paranoid so he is extremely dangerous and right now he is on the back foot and fighting for his very existence.
He says he’s not bluffing but one would hope that only a person who was bluffing would say that.
If he did decide to use a tactical nuclear warhead in Ukraine, would his own systems and the people around him allow it, knowing that it could begin the end of themselves and their families?
And if a nuclear device was used, would the US or other members of NATO actually retaliate as they have said they would, knowing that they and everyone they know could be wiped from the face of the earth in short measure?
These are questions none of us would hope to have to learn the answers to.
This is a dangerous situation we all find ourselves in, with no easy way out.
Putin’s mobilisation of 300,000 reservists shows he is not backing away from his war on Ukraine.
It has caused much dissent and unhappiness in Russia but his grip on power is strong, so a regime change from some sort of uprising isn’t going to happen.
Maybe he will be removed from power by those around him in some form, but he is very well protected, so another unlikely scenario at this time.
All we can hope for is that common sense prevails, and no one does anything stupid.
See, all the other things you were worried about are really of little consequence eh?
