35 minute read
Kiwi axeman makes global mark
22 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – June 13, 2022 Newsmaker Kiwi axeman makes global mark
There are few sounds more satisfying than the smack of axe into timber, and Jack Jordan of Taumarunui has proven he is one of the best at making that sound echo the loudest. The world Timbersports champion spoke to Richard Rennie about his latest win.
JACK Jordan admits it has taken a while to come back down to earth after claiming victory over the world’s best wood cutters in the world trophy event.
Little more than two weeks after leaving for the Timbersports event in Vienna, Jordan is back at home on the family’s 1600ha sheep and beef unit southwest of Taumarunui, cautiously eyeing the heavy early winter rain now dousing the farm.
Were it not for the covid-19 pandemic, Jordan would have been packing his axes every three to four months to travel the globe competing in wood chopping events that gain intense spectator and competitor interest, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.
His latest win in the Timbersports event required him to complete four separate events in as quick a time as possible.
The event has returned after a two-year hiatus due to covid.
The sixteen competitors faced off with a simple remit.
That was to slice and chop through their allotted wood blocks in the quickest time possible.
The straight-line race was something Jordan managed to achieve 10 seconds ahead of his nearest competitor in the tiring final fifth round, much to the delight of the vocal, supportive crowd of 3500 in Vienna.
Starting with a chainsaw slice, the event gets significantly more physical from there, including an underhand chop, a cross saw slice and finishing with a standing block chop.
After a minute and five seconds, Jordan was finished.
The 26-year-old had managed to set the fastest time of the whole competition on his way to the final.
In the arm-aching final round of the night he defeated individual world champion, American Jason Lentz, with Australian Brad De Losa finishing third.
This came after Jordan had also managed to slice down rookie world campion Jack Argent in round 16 with a scorching 58.07 second finish.
On the night of his victory no one seemed more surprised than Jordan, who said he’d never have thought he could win something as big as that event against the best in the world.
After a week’s reflection and a return home he is now eyeing the next run of competitions, often held in the Northern Hemisphere where the champions are regarded as athletic heroes.
Back home, the sport appears to have faded from New Zealanders’ minds after the glory days in the 70s and 80s.
Back then woodchopping was televised on Sunday afternoons, getting ratings matched by other iconic shows including Country Calendar, It’s in the Bag and A Dog’s Show.
Champions like Sonny Bolstad became the example for country kids everywhere with access to an axe and a few old fence posts, trying to emulate his powerful, unrelenting slice, often with messy results.
The sport was the centrepiece event at many A&P show days, themselves increasingly under threat today as attendances dwindle.
“It certainly doesn’t have the younger guys getting into it that there used to be and maybe a few things will have to change to try and get the numbers back up again,” Jordan says.
His inspiration was his brother Shane, also a competitive woodchopper and world champion in his own right, who stays in tune running his own firewood and saw milling business in Taranaki.
Jordan says the brothers don’t get to train together often, and when they do usually avoid letting it gravitate into all out brotherly competition.
“I tend to be a bit better on the undercut and Shane’s good on the standing block.”
Jordan says one reason fewer younger competitors may be getting into the sport is the cost of both the equipment and the travel to events.
“Just for one axe you can be looking at $800-$900 to have one that’s ready for competition and then a crosscut saw, that will be anywhere from $3000 to $4000. Then you have to be prepared to put a lot of training in to be competitive. You are really doing it for the love of it.”
Leading up to the latest event, Jordan started visiting the local gym every week to push his aerobic fitness harder.
But he says the best way to get fit is simply to practice what you are competing in, which he does at least three times a week running through each of the events three times every training session.
As Jordan hunkers down for a King Country winter on the farm, he is also planning his next campaign.
This is the world team title event held in Gothenburg Sweden in late October.
More than 100 athletes from 20 nations will compete over two nights, with the world’s 12 best vying for the individual world champion title.
Jordan says he is confident New Zealand can field a good team this year, welcoming any offer of sponsorship to help them on their way.
DO THE WORK: Jack Jordan says the best way to get fit is simply to practice what you are competing in. HELPING HAND: Jack Jordan credits his brother Shane for getting him into a sport he now reigns supreme in.
You are really doing it for the love of it.
Jack Jordan World champion woodchopper
Startup looks to cure on-farm carbon headache
As farmers are urged to “know your number” and account for carbon emissions, a Singapore based firm has developed the technology to help with that. Unravel Carbon founders are promising a one stop solution to not only establishing green house gas emission numbers, but also generating solutions to help reduce them, and packaging a business’s efforts into a sustainability report for regulators and consumers alike. Richard Rennie reports.
UNRAVEL Carbon founder Marc Allen says with only eight years until firm climate targets have to be met, the proportion of businesses globally already measuring their carbon emissions and “knowing their numbers” is miniscule.
“Globally there are only about 10,000 businesses, out of 400 million, actually measuring their emissions.”
He says it is possible the potential in New Zealand’s primary sector efforts to “know your numbers” will place it at the leading edge of emissions knowledge, as required under He
Waka Eke Noa.
With $US7.4 million of startup capital funding now under its belt, the company has NZ and Australia well in its sights to ramp the numbers of businesses subscribing to the platform.
“And for the NZ agriculture sector in particular, that need to know your GHG emissions profile is even more compelling on grounds financial institutions like banks are going to be themselves required to know what their clients’ profiles are.”
Unravel Carbon’s aim is to simplify the auditing process used to determine GHG emissions profile.
Allen says right now the whole process is often handicapped by the sheer complexity of measurement, multiple spreadsheets and calculations that can make it a frustrating, painstaking process.
“We have found for many businesses, they are often left to try and determine their profiles on their own, there is a lack of procedure and methodology there.”
The founders have made food and agriculture the focus of the platform’s first decarbonisation “engine”.
Early-stage clients further up the food supply chain already include Salad Stop!, Asia’s largest salad chain and Indonesia’s top grocery delivery startup company HappyFresh.
Acknowledging many farms tend to fall into the small-medium enterprise scale, the company is also working to tune the system for such sized businesses.
“Of course, for farmers, their primary job is to farm, not to be emissions calculators. We are working to give them a highquality platform for calculation with minimum effort that is auditable and allowable.”
As the number of sectorspecific businesses builds under Unravel Carbon’s watch, accurate comparison to peers’ emissions is possible.
Month to month progress can be monitored, along with where the reductions have been achieved and what expenditure category those mitigations fall into.
Unravel Carbon is getting a full audit conducted on its processes to ensure it ticks the reporting boxes for NZ emissions regulations.
Driven by AI programmes and algorithms that learn and build on collective industry input to the programme, Unravel Carbon also draws on IPCC methodologies and GHG measurement protocols specific to the particular sector the business is from.
The system already includes early input data from the NZ pastoral sector on methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
“When measuring an individual farm’s profile, the system includes the ability to incorporate any novel or new solutions to reduce emissions, such as methane inhibitors as that technology becomes available,” Allen says.
The company has set the big goal of cumulatively removing one billion tonnes of CO2 through its programme’s calculations and subsequent emissions reductions recommendations to companies.
“That is our ‘North star’ goal, it is a reasonable percentage of the global emissions challenge, which is that by 2030 the world should have reduced carbon emissions by 43-48%, to about 25 gigatonnes a year.”
The platform’s ability to compile vast amounts of data from multiple related businesses gives it the capacity, along with climate advisor expert input, to make recommendations on where emissions reductions can take place to decarbonise the business.
Simple dashboard summaries include an indication of the mitigation’s cost, impact (on total emissions) and the time to implement.
“The ability to generate a sustainability report from the actual data and profile of the business is that final step Unravel Carbon completes. This ensures not only do the owners have a useful, user-friendly document, but they can genuinely claim full transparency about the process, both for consumers and as regulatory disclosure demands.”
Marc Allen Unravel Carbon
DECARBONISE: Unravel Carbon chief exeutive and founder Marc Allen says businesses need a simpler, smarter way to calculate their carbon emissions, while also being offered ways to reduce those emissions.
Kickstarting students agricultural careers at Feilding High School
Feilding High School is leading the way in preparing students for the diverse opportunities that come with a career in the primary sector. Watch the video now at youtube.com/OnFarmStory This episode was made possible with support from
Rabobank
EDITORIAL
Emissions strategy getting personal
PERSONAL responsibility is the key feature of the proposal put forward by He Waka Eke Noa to price emissions.
The group has been working on keeping farming out of the Emissions Trading Scheme while satisfying the Government’s climate change goals, and it’ll be interesting to see how the plan is received.
The favoured option is a farm-level calculation based on that landowner’s data.
A processor levy would have averaged out emissions costs across the sector and provided no incentive for a farmer to make reductions.
This way, a farmer can crunch the numbers and do what they think is best for their business and the planet.
Pushing farming into the ETS would have meant saying goodbye to the splitgas approach, which seems deeply unfair to food producers.
Even so, the costs being discussed are roughly the same whether farmers pay through the ETS or through this proposed farm-level shceme, at least in the short term.
There will be nuggets in this HWEN plan that need to be ironed out, but at least now we have a song sheet to read off.
Farmers will be looking for some certainty, it’s pretty hard to plan balance sheets, loans, investment and a career when there are so many unknowns.
But the fact is there are many things coming down the pipeline that we can’t predict.
What will the global food system look like in five or ten years?
Climate change is already making a huge impact elsewhere in the world and that will inform the choices people make.
The smart move is to tell the world we’re ready to meet that challenge.
We may be the first to price farm emissions, but we will certainly not be the last.
And as a nation that relies on having an international social licence to export, it’s not a good-to-have, it’s the price of doing business.
Bryan Gibson
LETTERS Helping hand taken away from us
LIKE many of you I have read in the press recently about Nait needing to raise more funds for a much needed overhaul of their database and systems, which are definitely clunky and showing their age.
Fair comment.
With the recent outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis that has shown the limitations of the current system, most should consider this upgrade is necessary.
Foot and mouth disease plus the newly publicised Lumpy Skin disease could be knocking on our biosecurity door at any time.
I do wonder though if one of their new policies might be a giant leap backwards.
One of the biggest problems of the current system is enabling farmers to understand how to use it in an efficient manner, so that they may register timely stock movements as they should.
Many throw their hands up in horror when trying to process these movements from forgotten passwords, poor internet, or just lack of technical savvy. This is where Nait-accredited agents come to the fore.
A large portion of my business is buying and selling store cattle.
I use a Nait-accredited agent to process these movements, which he does very efficiently and in a very timely manner.
He has been doing this for me and for many of the buyers of my cattle, since the Nait scheme started.
Nait has recently written to him demanding a large fee to audit his work in this regard so that he can continue.
He has decided to discontinue this aspect of his service because of this nonsense.
I now need to scan and register all these movements myself, which is liable to be less accurate than the previously described scenario.
The receiver of my cattle will now need to log on and do a matching receiving movement.
Will this get done?
Isn’t increased accuracy the ultimate goal here?
I know of other agents making the same decision.
This seems to me to be a money grabbing exercise to achieve nothing, or worse.
Bruce Williams
Dannevirke
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RECOGNISE VALUE: Stuart Chambers says every landowner with forest should receive a per hectare annual grant from the state in perpetuity.
It’s worthy, now let’s value it
Stuart Chambers
AS A one-time employee of the Queen Elizabeth National Trust and also a forest covenantor, it was suggested to me recently that rewards for forest protection need updating.
In this new world of climate change, forest protection is more important than ever and so the rewards for it need to reflect it.
The QEII Trust, as it is most commonly known, is an organisation set up by the Government to protect mostly forest on privately owned land.
It is generally little-known but has, over nearly 50 years, protected a lot of forest,and also other forms of open space such as tussock land, lakes and beaches and archaeological sites.
Currently it has more than 4900 protected areas of various sizes, totalling more than 180,000 hectares.
It has achieved this by offering landowners protection of such areas in perpetuity through legal covenants.
This has ensured that with changes in the land ownership over time, their cherished open space will remain forever.
Many have agreed with this idea and have invited protection and in so doing have relinquished the use of the land in the process.
They have not sought payment for their now-redundant acres and in many cases have continued with the land’s maintenance by way of fencing, pest control, weed control and the payment of its rates, mainly because the state (QEII) has carefully left the protected forested area on the original land title.
The actual outcome of this voluntary system of protection is that the state, with little enticement, has built up a scattered private forest park at no cost to it by way of land purchase, purely based on landowner goodwill.
For varied reasons, landowners have been willing to forgo productive use of this land and place it in this ‘park’ with the only reward being a small monetary one by way of fencing costs, and a bit for survey and legal expenses.
If landowners want to relinquish rights to their land and in essence give it to the state, while continuing to maintain it, that is their choice and many have done so.
An approach to the QE II Trust has always been welcomed and quite quickly attended to by a multitude of field staff, a board of directors and a large office staff, who eventually combine to arrive at a conclusion.
Whether the state, or the general public, have appreciated this is another matter.
Because so few know of the trust and what it does, I suggest they probably haven’t.
When I first looked into protecting a 100 acre farm forest back in the seventies, and prior to the establishment of the QEII Trust, the catchment authorities were the organisations to approach.
They were providing suitable funds by way of comprehensive farm plansand, in my case, the local Hauraki Catchment Board offered a very good system and service for protection including money for fencing and tree planting.
Their covenants, though, were only for a period of 23 years and with land frequently changing hands, as it always does, there was no way the protected areas were secure in the long term.
The QEII Trust then came along, spurred on by the catchment authority work, and offered much the same protection and with the same fencing money enticement, but its protection was in perpetuity.
This long-term protection was evidently what most landowners wanted and so slowly a portfolio of properties was built up.
The outcome of all systems of forest protection has seen the state gaining the protection of a large amount of forested New Zealand landscape at very little cost to it, this cost being further reduced with landowner contributions.
Overall, it has been a win for the environment, the public and the state alike.
However, things have now changed.
With climate change pressing, forest protection has a new meaning and need.
Its worth has increased with the protection of it becoming a necessity to everyone’s benefit.
Protection is no longer necessary just for its benefits to nature, erosion control and waterway protection but for the overall climate patterns as well.
It is not just benefitting a few environmentally-concerned people and downstream farmers but the public at large.
Now all areas of bush are important sequesters of carbon in an over-carboned world of livestock, transport and factories.
Therefore, the time has come for the state to recognise this new era and adjust accordingly the rewards to those who protect or have protected without productive reward, and probably the way to do this is through an upgraded protection agency such as the QEII Trust.
The state needs to start offering solid financial benefits to those who have given up user-rights to their land for the benefit and appreciation of all New Zealanders.
We have moved into a time when every acre of bush is important for its long term carbon benefits for the climate and if we are serious about reducing methane emissions, the encouragement of further forest protection is a big way to help the cause.
Certainly we do have a carbon emission trading scheme, but that is aimed more at providing an incentive to plantation growers, people who haven’t relinquished the rights to the use of their land but plan to reap future monetary returns from it.
The aim of this scheme is to encourage replanting.
So now, instead of simply offering protection by the current land-take system of the QEII Trust without reward, we need to implement a system which offers ongoing financial reward of a continual nature to all those who protect.
That is, if as a nation we are serious about reducing methane in the atmosphere.
Every landowner with forest, whether it be protected via a catchment scheme, the Department of Conservation, a district council initiative, Māori land or the QEII Trust, or even not legally protected at all, should receive a per hectare annual grant from the state in perpetuity.
Further, those that do seek permanent legal protection in perpetuity should get a total fencing grant where necessary and pay no district or regional council rates on it.
This grant should be administered either by district councils or a QEII-type trust updated into a large scale forest protection agency.
Under such a scheme all remaining unprotected forest would quickly become protected by fencing and covenant and many hectares of marginal land would be replanted in natives for the good of waterways and natural life.
The methane problem from agriculture would soon be counteracted as might the climate dramas of floods and droughts.
Such a scheme of reward would also reduce the hesitancy that the sale of land with covenants on it currently experiences where buyers baulk at paying good money for land which has no freedom of use.
So first the Government should acknowledge and appreciate its current land-take of protected bush.
Then it should come up with the money to reward it and further finance it.
ThePulpit
Who am I?
Stuart Chambers is Hauraki-based writer and former sheep farmer.
Your View
Proposed gas plan misses the mark
Alternative View
Alan Emerson
I’M UNIMPRESSED with the He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN) report saga.
My view is that the entire process was unnecessary.
It was completed by the sector with a gun effectively pointed at its head.
The original discussion was all about putting agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
As a compromise the sector was tasked with providing an alternative.
My view is that either option is crazy, but the sector has come up with an alternative as it was directed to do.
Ridiculously in my view James Shaw can accept or reject HWEN and railroad the sector into the ETS, so whether the entire exercise is worthwhile or not is anyone’s guess.
Putting it in perspective, NZ contributes 0.17% of global greenhouse gasses (GHG’s).
That means our food producing sector is around 0.08%.
That’s a fraction of the emissions currently generated by the war in Ukraine.
A war NZ has shown indecent haste to be part of.
The reality is that farmers are in the ETS now.
For example, we pay through the ETS for fuel and for power.
What HWEN is about is bringing animals into an emissions reduction scheme and I have a problem with that as has every other food producing country.
For a start, as I’ve written previously, we are the most methane-efficient farmers in the world.
A kilogram of food not produced here will be produced elsewhere with a higher carbon footprint.
It is ridiculous.
Animals, as we know, produce food so what we’re contemplating in NZ is taxing food production.
Despite being contrary to the Paris Accord any tax on food production will make us less competitive.
Taken to extreme lengths it will put us out of business.
I do not accept the point that if we’re low-carbon it will assist us in the international marketplace – for two reasons.
The first is that, as I’ve said, we have the lowest carbon profile of any food producer now.
The second is that we totally ignore the carbon footprint of the food we import, which will be far higher than that produced locally.
Take Croation pork for example.
Another factor is that the world is desperately short of food, with 276 million people currently starving in Africa alone.
That’s an increase of 500% in the past five years.
We should be encouraging food production as the starvation problem will only get worse.
While I acknowledge that about 50% of our emissions come from the primary sector I remain unconvinced about the science supporting the argument. I also remain skeptical that we need to have food production in the mix at all as no other country has done it.
The harsh reality is there isn’t a lot farmers can actually do.
Ruminants burp methane.
James Shaw has admitted as much.
Another fable, certainly among the Greenpeace crowd, is that reducing cow numbers will reduce methane.
Taken on its own it won’t.
It is feed consumption that produces methane so having fewer cows on the same pastures will produce a similar amount of methane.
Back to the HWEN report.
In my humble opinion the entire exercise is political and not environmental.
As I’ve said the report came about with the Government saying that they won’t put farm animals into the ETS at this point but that the sector needed to produce a solution or it would change its mind and voila, animals are in the ETS.
There is no logic in that position.
As I’ve said the entire deal is political.
The bureaucratic cost of implementing the report’s recommendations are considerable and we’re going to have an Implementation Agency, a System Oversight Board and an Independent Maori Board. Why?
Why did both the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment refuse to sign the final report as it “jeopardised their independent advice to Ministers”?
I don’t trust that position.
Why did Māori have their own chapter free of any other input.
They talk about moving away from “our current industrial farming practices”.
What do they want; a return to picks and shovels?
Why wasn’t a full cost benefit analysis done?
That in my opinion is a criminal omission.
Last week in Farmers Weekly, we had North Tec’s Peter Bruce-Iri telling me that “the mathematics and accounting of methane levels is acknowledged as inaccurate and has resulted in a simplistic policy approach which hamstrings the livestock sector”.
Think of that.
We have an inaccurate process for evaluating methane levels which the Government wants to use to stifle food production.
It is ridiculous and will cost the country dearly.
It will cost farmers too as the 2030 levy is estimated at 35 cents a kilogram of methane.
That’s about $35 a cow tax for each and every year or $315m tax income for the Government.
Perhaps the Government should just be honest up-front and introduce an animal tax or a food production levy.
NO PROOF: Alan Emerson does not accept the point that if we’re low-carbon it will assist us in the international marketplace.
Your View
Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
No more thorns in our side
SOME weeks ago, I wrote about Californian thistles and the plague of them appearing here in increasing numbers over the past few years.
I usually get a bit of feedback from each column, but this one elicited a large number of emails, both from fellow sufferers and those with suggestions on how to deal with them.
I’ve never collated feedback from a column before but as much of this was useful and some of it lateral, I thought you might be interested.
Quite a lot had great faith in going down the chemical pathway.
Lex from Waimate is a huge fan of Versatill (Clopyralid).
Tough on clover he tells me but deadly on thistles and the Calis.
Years earlier he’d used it to spray a rape paddock covered in them and the control was the strip that was missed, which were the only thistles left.
Now on a smaller block, he has eradicated them with some diligent spot spraying with his backpack.
I’m going to offer him the pleasure of wandering around here with his trusty backpack for a few months.
John up in Northland had also eradicated his thistles with Versatill.
Another John from Whanganui had reliable results with Archer, which is also Clopyralid from using his weed wiper.
But it needed a diligent approach with several applications.
He was also a fan of Thistrol which is a bit of MCPA and MCPB.
Murray from Waimiha gave his Friesian bulls the flick and went back to good old breeding cows.
His break feeding regime with these workhorses in the spring and early summer has seen his Californians disappear along with his rushes.
Too late for me to change my farming systems but another often unseen advantage for the cow.
Nick down in Central Otago had the perfect organic solution.
He’s been farming in Central Otago for 40 years and until 10 years ago, calis, scotch and nodders were always a recurring problem.
But he found an answer that cleaned them all out within two years.
Something that quietly waits until the thistle seed head starts to flower and swell.
Something that loves plucking those colourful flowerheads off the plants, repeatedly leaving them with no means of reproducing.
Thistles eventually give up.
Goats.
However, he can’t graze his goats in the sheep areas as they get full of worms but happily coexist with his deer and there are no thistles in those paddocks.
Scobie who is well known from AgResearch wrote this thoughtful note.
“It seems there is one herbicide you have not tried on your Californian thistles.
“It is effective. I worked alongside a scientist who spent his entire career looking for ways to control them and this is one of the few that works.
“It is non-toxic and leaves no residue, will not contaminate waterways and there is no risk to your medical health.”
“There is a small risk to your mental health though.
“I know you are a proud sheep and beef farmer and an advocate for trees.
“The tried and proven way to get rid of Californian and nodding thistles is to graze them with goats.
“I shall be interested in your reaction.
“I expect it to be the same as virtually every sheep and beef farmer I have ever talked to about goats.
“Right now, ridiculous amounts are being paid for their fibre.
“You can add ten goat’s percent to your ewe flock without reducing ewe numbers, rid yourself of weeds and simultaneously improve your pasture without putting diesel in a tractor – all scientifically proven, yet nobody seems to want to farm them.
“I need to work out what that is about.”
However, there were also several fans of the biological control options which are appealing to me.
I’ve already seen the benefits of the Nodding Thistle Receptacle Weevil so know these biocontrol agents can be effective, free, and environmentally friendly.
The most enthusiastic was Vince, a dairy farmer from Tararua.
He even supplied numerous photos of his small, imported friends.
His Green Thistle Beetle populations were having a decent impact on his Californians.
The fact that intrigued me about these little critters was that they protect themselves from predators by piling their own excrement upon their backs.
Vince, who obviously has a sharp eye and is observant, had also imported the brilliantly named Vagrant Twitcher which was happily chewing away on his Scotch Thistles as well.
The insects weren’t eradicating his thistles but were definitely helping with the control.
I’m going to visit Vince in the spring to harvest some of his helpful insects and bring them here.
Not just to assist in thistle control but because of the ways in which they protect themselves needs to be seen and because their names are so cool.
From the Ridge
Steve Wyn-Harris
Can agriculture beat methane?
The Braided Trail
Keith Woodford
NEW Zealand agriculture is required to achieve a 10% reduction in its methane emissions by 2030.
This is set down in legislation.
The subsequent 2050 target, also laid out in legislation, has been set in the range of 24-47%, with the specific requirement within this range still to be determined.
The question addressed here is whether these targets are realistic and what do they mean for the future of pastoral agriculture?
The reason this is such an important question is that pastoral exports from dairy, sheep, beef and venison comprise some 50% of New Zealand’s merchandise exports.
Add in horticulture, fish and forestry, and the overall primary industries contribution to exports rises to over 80%.
These export percentages have been increasing each year for the last ten years.
Looked at another way, nonprimary-industry exports have been steadily declining as share of total exports, something very poorly understood within broader society.
Without exports, New Zealand cannot fund imports.
And without imports, the whole economy falls over.
Approximately half of the pastoral-sourced methane is generated on dairy farms and just under half on sheep and beef farms.
However, the impact of a methane levy will be felt most fiercely by sheep and beef.
This is because there is less economic resilience in the sheep and beef industries to withstand the levies.
To understand the reduction pathways, the starting point is to recognise that methane production is a direct function of the total amount of feed eaten by pastoral animals, which in turn is driven by the amount of feed grown.
Accordingly, the amount of feed grown and eaten has to decline by about 10% by 2030.
Unless new technologies become available that reduce the amount of methane from each kilogram of feed that is eaten, there is no other alternative way to meet the reduction.
There is one possible caveat to the above statement.
About 5% of the methane on dairy farms is associated with effluent ponds, and there is a new technology, already close to commercialisation, that can totally smash these effluent pond emissions.
Trademarked as the ‘Ecopond’ technology, it is based on adding controlled levels of ferric sulphate to effluent ponds, with this making the effluent pond an unsuitable environment for methane-producing bacteria, and no environmental downsides.
The Ecopond science has been developed and proven at Lincoln University.
Ravensdown is now proceeding with commercialisation.
Already installed on two pilot farms, hopefully the system will be commercially available within the next year.
If the Ecopond systems are fully implemented, then methane from dairy farms would reduce by about 5%.
Across the total pastoral system, that would mean savings of about 2.5%.
So, even assuming full implementation, that still leaves 7.5% further reduction required by 2030.
This can only be done by reducing the amount of feed consumed by dairy, sheep and beef.
The pathway to that lies in converting some sheep and beef land to forestry, together with a likely decrease in the number of dairy cows in response to regulatory constraints.
However, this does not necessarily mean that the volume of pastoral products has to decline.
This is because increasing the biological efficiency of production, with less feed consumed per unit of product, also leads directly to less methane emissions per unit of product.
In essence, it is all about production systems that reduce the amount of feed required for maintenance, thereby leaving more feed available to drive production.
I mentioned in a recent article that methane emissions per kg of New Zealand lamb meat are estimated to have decreased by 31% since 1990-91.
This has been a direct result of much higher carcase weights and much higher lambing percentages, with ewe size only increasing marginally.
These biological efficiency gains then flow through directly to the same efficiency gains in terms of lower methane emissions per unit of product.
About seven years ago I was adviser for a PhD study by Peter Klaassen that explored the potential for further increases in biological efficiency within sheep farming.
Peter demonstrated how there was no one factor.
Rather, it was going to be a case of working on multiple factors including further increases in lambing percentage, plus lower death rates, perhaps more lambing as hoggets, and perhaps even higher carcass weights.
But with each progressive step, further improvement becomes increasingly challenging.
Some weeks back, I spent a morning with Professor Derrick Moot at Lincoln discussing what further improvements we could see forthcoming from known technologies in regard to methane emissions from sheep.
We both think that a further 10% is realistic, but getting there by 2030 could be a very big ask.
In contrast to sheep, productivity improvements in cattle, and hence lower intensity of methane production, have been modest at about 8% over the last 30 years.
This is largely because cattle are not designed to produce twins, and they cannot be convinced otherwise.
Also, cattle have always been slaughtered at close to their mature liveweights.
But further reductions in methane intensity can still occur as better use is made of the surplus calves from the dairy industry.
Use of sex-selected semen to produce dairy females and crossbred-beef males will be fundamental to this occurring.
Although already widely used, some fine tuning of the technology is still needed.
I then went digging to see what I could find about reduced methane intensity in New Zealand dairying, using the key performance indicator of feed eaten per kg of Milksolids (fat plus protein).
I found a DairyNZ paper prepared for MPI in 2021 estimating that in 1990-91 the average cow weighed 470kg, produced 243kg milksolids, and ate 3.87 tonnes of dry matter.
By 2019-20, the average cow still weighed 470kg (by coincidence) but produced 376kg milksolids and ate 4.76 tonnes of dry matter.
I then did some calculations to come up with an estimate that the biological efficiency increase had been 21%, with this flowing through to the same improvement in terms of reduced intensity of methane production.
Although not quite as spectacular as the improvements with sheep, it has still been a remarkable improvement.
I then looked at what would happen if milksolids production per kg of liveweight increased from the 2019-20 figure of 0.8kg of milksolids per kg liveweight to 1kg milksolids for each kg of liveweight.
The biological efficiency would increase by a further 9% and methane emission intensity would drop by a similar amount.
Most of the farmers that I work with are already operating with milksolids production per cow at between 0.9 and 1.2kg of milksolids per kg of liveweight.
So, getting the average for the industry up to a 1:1 ratio would seem a worthy goal.
Bringing this all together, achieving 10% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 looks feasible but challenging.
It can only happen if some of the marginal sheep and beef country is converted to forestry – something in excess of 500,000 hectares.
My key concern is that this occurs on the genuinely steep marginal country, and with a focus on non-harvested forests, rather than short-cycle production forests of which we already have close to two million hectares.
As part of the equation, New Zealand has to decide whether it is serious about the Paris commitment that all countries made as to the importance of maintaining food production.
Also, if New Zealand is to avoid shooting itself in the foot in regard to export industries, then in taking a step forward there has to be a focus on what is already known in regard to driving further efficiencies in farming systems.
When I started writing this article, I planned to extend the analysis through to the post-2030 years leading to the much tougher 2050 target range of 24-47%.
However, that will have to wait for another time.
What I will say here is that it is going to be exceptionally difficult to retain vibrant export industries and still get within that target range, unless some commercial technologies applicable to pastoral conditions become available.
These technologies would need to inhibit methane-producing bacteria in the rumen but without reducing animal productivity.
The extent of the challenge should be a concern for all New Zealanders.
The export alternatives to pastoral agriculture on hilly lands exposed to a South Pacific maritime climate are far from obvious.
ONE TOOL: Ravensdown general manager innovation and strategy Mike Manning with the new Ecopond system, which Keith Woodford says is an important innovation that farmers can use to reduce methane emissions.
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Keith Woodford was Professor of Farm Management and Agribusiness at Lincoln University for 15 years through to 2015. He is now Principal Consultant at AgriFood Systems Ltd. He can be contacted at kbwoodford@ gmail.com Previous articles can be found at https://keithwoodford. wordpress.com
