20 minute read
Opinion
Opinion
Why is the Govt targeting ag?
Alternative View
Alan Emerson
I DON’T expect much from politicians of any colour, but the current impasse on He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN) has me stuffed.
HWEN was set up to enable the agricultural sector and government to develop a workable plan to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Its chief executive was quoted saying that the organisation was trying to drive change without putting people out of business, which is a credible position in my view.
Sadly politicians aren’t on the same side of the discussion. Climate Change Minister James Shaw certainly isn’t.
What they’re hoping to achieve, heaven only knows.
Let’s assume we really want to reduce the threat of climate change. That we honestly want the world to be a better place.
If that is the Government’s intention it is worthy, but whatever happens in New Zealand will have no effect on the global climate. Anything we do is therefore aimed at being seen as a good citizen, nothing more, nothing less. Whatever actions we take may look good, outstanding even, but for the state of the world climate they will achieve nothing.
In addition, as actions speak louder than words, the world action on climate change leaves much to be desired.
For a start, the use of the world’s biggest polluter, coal, increased by 9% last year. It is the largest source of global emissions. Here we did our bit importing over a million tonnes of lowquality, high-polluting coal from Indonesia, while exporting the same amount of high-quality coal. We used over three million tonnes of the pollutant.
Further, the Australian government subsidised its oil and coal industries by $A10.3 billion last year. Oil and coal are responsible for 74% of Australia’s emissions, which total 528.7 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Returning to the home front, it is important to factor that our agricultural industry is the most GHG efficient in the world. Any kilogram of food not produced here will incur a greater carbon footprint when produced overseas.
Add to that, food production is currently the only show in town for the NZ economy. Tourism doesn’t exist now or will in the near future and neither will international students. It is also important to factor that when those industries return so will their considerable carbon footprint.
All of which begs the question as to why the Government, certainly in the form of Shaw, has such a downer on the food production sector, especially when the Paris Accord rates food production differently.
Its worthy goal is to “increase the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low GHG emissions developed in a manner that does not threaten food production”.
Why are we ignoring that and embarking on a crusade that will threaten our food production, increase the world’s GHG emissions from food production and crash the NZ economy?
Why aren’t we factoring in low-methane livestock as is being developed? Why aren’t we encouraging methane inhibitors?
So now we have HWEN. Our industry bodies and government officials have worked through two options. It now wants feedback from farmers on those options.
Shaw’s contribution has been to distance himself from both, saying “serious price is the best tool for government to reduce emissions”.
For that read further taxing farmers at a time when farm costs are going through the roof.
Didn’t Shaw talk to his officials while the options were being developed? After all, he is the Associate Minister for the Environment and MfE officials were part of HWEN.
Has he already made up his mind making the entire HWEN process and consultation a complete sham?
It would appear that way. Government wants feedback on the two HWEN proposals by April, and Beef and Lamb and Dairy NZ had farmer meetings planned to discuss the options.
Didn’t government think of the busy time of the farming year when it set the deadline?
The levy organisations and Federated Farmers have asked for an extension to the timeline as farmers were busy and Omicron is nigh. Feds have written to the Prime Minister pleading for that to happen.
An extension has been given of one measly month, ignoring both the threat of covid and the needs of the farm.
The HWEN alternatives are complex subjects with limited potential to discuss via Zoom meetings.
Shaw should know that, as he insisted on physically going with a large team to the COP talkfest in Glasgow. Why can’t he give NZ’s largest export earner the same courtesy?
Holding meetings through a red light framework that limits attendance is ridiculous and a real threat to NZ’s exports. Further, it will inevitably expose farmers to Omicron, which is insane.
It just seems to me that Shaw and his brigade in Wellington know or care nothing about agriculture and wouldn’t recognise a sheep from a goat.
Sorry, by their actions they’d know a goat.
Your View
Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
The ugly side of protests
From the Ridge
Steve Wyn-Harris
THE most disturbing event I’ve seen in recent times was the storming of the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
There were up to two thousand enraged Trump supporters, intent on overturning his election defeat from a couple of months earlier as the legislators, including Trump’s own vice president Pence, went through the formalities that would lead to Biden becoming the next president.
These people occupied, vandalised and looted this bastion of US democracy and in the process, five people lost their lives, many were injured, including 138 police officers and four police officers who participated in the incident took their lives in the following months.
It was shocking because despite what the US had gone through during the Trump presidency, the US remains a cornerstone and leader of Western democracy.
If this sort of near anarchy could happen in America with all its safeguards, police, and military resources, one couldn’t help thinking that it could happen anywhere.
On Monday following Waitangi Day we were driving back from a wedding heading for home and came into Dannevirke.
The town was chock-full of protestors and their vehicles heading towards Wellington.
I don’t mind a good protest and have been in a few myself since my student days.
Protest is a fundamental right in a functioning democracy and acts as a pressure valve for frustration and for those who feel their voices are not being heard.
Not being on social media nor having followed news reports during the time of the wedding, I was unaware of the protest, so was interested to read the banners and slogans scrawled across the vehicles.
A lot were against the vaccine, against the vaccine mandates and against mask use.
But there were also signs denouncing the government, 1080 protests, unpleasant profanities, a couple of swastikas, heaps of New Zealand flags, with many upside down, and even Trump supporters waving American flags and pictures of Donald. I think he’d be pleased and bemused at his presence in a small town in a small country at the bottom of the world.
When I got home, I googled the protest up and had a better understanding of what their intentions and frustrations were.
I texted three Wellington mates who it turned out were also unaware of what was heading in their direction and told them that given the number of vehicles we had just encountered and the talk on social media; they were going to have a very disrupted day tomorrow. We all know what it’s like just getting into Wellington on a normal day.
The disruption obviously did happen on that first day, but my concern that something worse might spill over was unfounded. It was Parliament’s first sitting day of the year.
But the next few days have seen increased anti-social and illegal behaviour.
There have been much bigger and more disruptive demonstrations in our nation’s capital.
The Māori Land March in 1975, for example, saw 4000 people walk into Wellington, causing huge disruption and despite claims that this is the first time Parliament’s grounds have been occupied, 60 people did camp overnight.
However, these protestors are hassling passing public for wearing masks and the anger directed at the media means they are now having to report from safe distances.
Not only is peaceful protest a fundamental right of a functioning democracy, but so is a free press.
I feel sorry for the police who are in the position of holding that thin blue line against a crowd of angry people.
Some of them have already been injured.
The police also have the risk of the virus, given none of the protestors are wearing masks and a substantial number are not vaccinated.
If this event doesn’t become the super-spreader we await as they return to their homes, it will be a miracle and one would have to wonder if we really are “God’s Own” as Prime Minister Richard Seddon popularised at the start of the 20th century. His statue overlooks these goings on at Parliament.
Where we are fortunate is that all the political parties represented in Parliament support the science that the vaccination programme is based on and so the dissent is not also being played out within Parliament.
At the time of writing, I fervently hope that this doesn’t escalate and that the protestors feel they have made their point and return home to their families, homes and jobs.
BROKEN TELEPHONE: While every nation has its right to peaceful protests, Steve Wyn-Harris believes the message is often lost in the manner in which it is delivered.
Ag GHG proposals need a reset
The Braided Trail
Keith Woodford
THE coming weeks are crucial in sorting out the long-term charging framework, right through to 2050, for agriculture’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Right now, things are not going well.
The cross-industry MāoriGovernment group charged with developing the framework is called He Waka Eke Noa (HWEN). Currently, there are two options out for discussion among farmers.
If no consensus is reached as to the path ahead, then the backstop is that agriculture comes into the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) in 2025, with that legislation already in place.
The worst outcome for agriculture would be as part of the ETS, with its inherent inflexibility. Among other things, it would mean that charging for shortlived methane emissions would be based on the fundamentally flawed 100-year carbon dioxide equivalence (CO2e) figure. Carbon-dioxide equivalence is a seriously confounded measure.
I first wrote about the flaws in CO2e thinking in relation to methane more than 15 years ago. But at the time no one seemed very interested. Now it is a real big issue.
Short-lived methane emissions from New Zealand agriculture have changed very little over the past 20 years. That means that there is now minimal growth in the invisible ‘atmospheric cloud’ of methane sourced from NZ agriculture, with inflows and outflows approximately in balance. That in turn means that agriculturally sourced methane from NZ agriculture is having very little additional warming effect on climate, despite methane being a well-acknowledged GHG.
This warming situation contrasts strongly to the situation with long-lived carbon dioxide, with new emissions piling up in the atmosphere on top of prior emissions which are only leaving the atmosphere very slowly.
The alternative HWEN proposals take a split-gas approach. That is an important step forward that allows the shortlived and long-lived gases to be considered on their merits. But there are still lots of nasty fishhooks out there. These include both the measurement metrics and the administration of the system.
There are some who say that methane should not be charged at all. However, the counter to that is that methane is indeed a powerful GHG. If NZ’s methane emissions were to decrease, then with all other things being unchanged, the world would cool, albeit by a tiny amount, given that the world is big and NZ is small.
There are also a lot of people, including it would seem Minister of Climate Change James Shaw, who remain wedded to the confounded CO2e framework.
The consequence of thought diversity is that it is very hard to have constructive conversations about these matters. Most people seem confident that their own perspective is the only correct one.
I first wrote in broad terms about the HWEN proposals back in late November. I then planned to sit back on the sidelines and watch the shouting and stone throwing that I knew would occur between the protagonists. I had no particular wish to get caught in the middle.
However, I now find myself increasingly drawn into discussions by farmers and farmer groups as to whether any of the proposals are satisfactory. As things stand, the answer is that neither of the HWEN options, nor the ETS backstop, is acceptable to most of the interested parties.
Among the more rational thinkers, this then leads inevitably to questions as to what can be done to improve the proposals?
In these discussions, I consistently hold the position that being in the ETS is the worst outcome of all. In the long-term, it would do great damage to the land-based industries, with small pain initially but then increasing inexorably over time. The damage would not only be to agriculture but to the overall NZ economy.
I have said multiple times before, but I can see that I will have to remind some non-rural people again, that primary industries provide more than 80% of NZ’s export income. Pastoral exports alone now comprise 50% of exports. There is nothing on the horizon to replace the pastoral exports.
Many urban folk do not comprehend that NZ’s pastoral soils are in general highly unsuited to cropping. It won’t happen for the simple reason that it would be both an ecological and economic disaster.
If agriculture does enter the ETS, then levies will be collected by processors per unit of production. This would mean that all producers pay an emission charge based on the average efficiency, with no incentive to be more efficient.
Within the ETS system, and with the levy applied at the processor level but inevitably charged back to farmers, the only response behaviour that reduces the levy is by producing less product. That means less export income.
The HWEN proposals provide an alternative framework that has potential to shift the focus from reducing output to encouraging production systems that reduce the intensity of GHG emissions per unit of output. But for that to be achieved, there has to be a major focus on research and development (R&D) programmes that can unlock those improvements, with this knowledge then flowing through to extension and education programmes. The levies on methane and nitrous oxide are the funding tool to make all of this happen.
When the HWEN draft proposals came out in November, I was cautiously optimistic that this was indeed the key focus. However, with more details now available in the latest draft dated February 2022, which extends to 50 pages, warning bells are ringing strongly.
I note that only a very small proportion of the levies are now proposed to be used for emissionefficiency research. A large proportion of the levies will be taken up by administration. The other major use of the levies will be sequestration payments for carbon-storing activities that are currently excluded from the ETS.
Most forestry activities that sequester new carbon are already in the ETS and this is the place they belong. However, there are some components of forestry, for example related to riparian plantings, that are excluded. Also, some of the rules relating to regenerating indigenous vegetation need amendment. However, such changes should be occurring within the ETS rather than dragging these issues across into the HWEN proposals. HWEN should be for agriculture.
Shaw has indicated in recent days that he does not think the HWEN proposals go far enough in reducing agricultural emissions. That is because he is focusing on the so-called direct effects whereby farmers would reduce production. The reason that the direct effects of levies are expected at least initially to be small is that most farmers have no alternative to pastoral activities.
What the modelling shows is that pricing is not the way to solve the emissions problem and get the change that is needed. Environmental regulations plus emission-efficiency research, together with afforestation of the steep erodible soils within the carbon-based ETS, is the way to go.
Perhaps Shaw and others need to be reminded that the Paris Agreement, which NZ signed up to, is very explicit that GHG policies should not be at the expense of food production. Accordingly, there is a need to refocus on what can be done to increase the emission efficiency of pastoral production and thereby reduce emissions.
Research into technologies and systems to reduce the emissions intensity of agricultural production is an issue very close to my heart. I am astounded that HWEN could now be proposing an indicative R&D allocation for emissions efficiency of only $10 million per annum for the pastoral industry that earns $30 billion of export earnings. This level of proposed R&D is indeed trivial. And that means that HWEN, linked at least in part to internal tensions within its members, has lost the plot.
The message back to HWEN needs to be that there is strong support for a split-gas approach. However, a reset of thinking is now required to focus on the amount of money that is needed and can be spent productively on R&D. All parties to HWEN and also Shaw need to be reminded that the aim is to reduce emissions, not production. A fundamental principle is that the levies, both on methane and nitrous oxide, need to be no more than is required to achieve those reductions.
Getting the HWEN proposals back on track is not going to be easy. Given the multiplicity of parties involved, together with the diversity of thinking both within HWEN itself, and also between HWEN and Shaw, there is no easy way forward.
Increasingly I am of the perspective that this is not going to get sorted out before the next election. All of the key political parties therefore have some work to do.
RIGHT DIRECTION: Keith Woodford says the alternative He Waka Eke Noa proposals take a split-gas approach, which is an important step forward that allows the short-lived and long-lived gases to be considered on their merits.
Your View
Opinion
Tinkering around the edges
Meaty Matters
Allan Barber
FORESTRY Minister Stuart Nash has confirmed the Government’s policy of planting “the right tree in the right place for the right reasons” to promote the long-term sustainability of the primary sector, noting it “makes growing forests, rather than raising sheep and beef, more attractive to many local and overseas investors”. He also recognises the dangers of large tracts of productive land being sold for forestry, because of the impact on rural communities and the potentially appalling environmental legacy if the forests are not harvested.
He said the NZ Forestry Service, Treasury, Ministry for the Environment and (unspecified) Cabinet Ministers are working right now on the appropriateness of the special forestry test, which was introduced by the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) Amendment Act (2018). The Treasury has been leading a review of the effect of the Act since mid-last year and is due to report to Ministers later this year.
The Treasury review will assess the amended Act’s effectiveness in achieving the original policy intent to facilitate sales to foreign investors and whether it is in alignment with other government objectives or work programmes, but it “will not consider whether carbon farming (permanent forestry) should be able to begin to use the special forestry test, nor will it inquire into the appropriateness of applications to convert farmland to forestry using that test…”. Hopefully the relevant Ministers will realise the harmful impact of the fast increasing carbon price, now nearly at $80, on farmland conversions, even if this is outside the scope of the review.
Ministers involved in this exercise in addition to Nash are presumably David Parker, James Shaw and Damien O’Connor, none of whom has publicly spoken on the uncontrolled conversion of pastoral land to forestry. The silence of Parker and Shaw is not surprising, given the assurances presented by the latter to COP26 about New Zealand’s commitment to methane reduction, but as Minister of Agriculture, O’Connor should be willing to stand up for sheep and beef farming.
National spokesperson Barbara Kuriger said “incentivising companies to buy up our productive farmland and lock it up semi-permanently or even permanently in a monoculture, so other companies can buy carbon credits, is short-sighted and is leading to perverse outcomes, losing good farmland, damaging local communities, having potentially harmful effects on biodiversity and fundamentally does nothing to encourage other industries to adapt.”
She encourages farmers to attend the HWEN consultation process, which proposes incentivising native tree planting on-farm.
ACT’s agricultural spokesperson Mark Cameron argues the ETS needs replacing, a viewpoint also firmly held by B+LNZ chief executive Sam McIvor and reinforced by Gisborne District Councillor and farmer Kerry Worsnop.
Worsnop said the “ETS is a monster”, which allows indiscriminate planting of trees so carbon emitters can generate credits to underpin their claims of carbon neutrality. She also told me of an approach to a Māori incorporation by an overseas investor with $200 million to invest in forestry conversion land on the East Coast. This type of investment is compounded by the fact NZ is the only country to allow 100% offsetting of carbon credits against emissions, compared with 20% or lower in other countries.
While B+LNZ welcomed the review of the OIO fast-track for forestry investment, McIvor said that this was just tinkering around the edges as foreign investors only accounted for around 25% of sheep and beef farm sales into forestry. B+LNZ’s key priority remained getting limits on forestry offsets under the ETS. This was not part of what Minister Nash recently announced, which was very disappointing, and B+LNZ would continue to push for it.
McIvor also said farmers should be granted the same incentives to plant native trees, which sequester carbon for much longer than exotics. Cameron believes farms here sequester as much greenhouse gas as they emit, and he has asked the Minister and MPI to look at the inconsistency of a measurement approach, which only recognises on side of the equation, while National believes more research into measurement of natives’ sequestration is needed.
Worsnop says the dangers of legislation allowing farm to forestry conversions unhindered are unambiguous, but the politicians have shut their eyes to the implications and she questions their will to change. Hopefully Nash means what he says and will be able to persuade his ministerial colleagues to make overdue and sensible changes to the OIO. It is highly unlikely this discussion will include a decision to review the ETS.
I sincerely hope our government moves beyond the simplistic solution of planting one billion trees and takes steps to protect the rural sector’s ability to produce good food.
Your View
Allan Barber is a meat industry commentator: allan@barberstrategic. co.nz, http://allanbarber.wordpress. com
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