OPINION
MACHINERY & PRODUCTS
NEWS
Rural recycling a no-brainer.
A loader with a difference.
Water quality in rivers the number one priorityEnvironment Minister PAGE 7
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TO ALL FARMERS, FOR ALL FARMERS MARCH 6, 2018: ISSUE 648
www.ruralnews.co.nz
ETS opt in option PAM TIPA pamelat@ruralnews.co.nz
WHILE 95% of agricultural emissions will not come under the Emissions Trading Scheme, farmers will have an option to opt in and gain the financial benefit, says Minister for the Environment David Parker. The Government wants to ensure there is reward for people who reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, Parker told the Agcarm Summer Conference in Auckland recently. He says most agricultural emissions will not come under the emissions trading scheme, he says. “95% of their emissions will free: they will be paid for by others effectively. The 5% being charged will be collected at the processors.
“But we will enable individual farmers who want to opt into the scheme at a farm level to opt in. “If you have a farmer who opts in with their share of those 95% free emissions, if they reduce their emissions by for example converting to a horticultural land use where there are no ruminant greenhouse gas emissions, they get the financial benefit of that emissions reduction,” he explains. “That will incentivise the land use change that both reduces greenhouse
gas emissions and leads to higher value land uses.” ASB’s senior rural economist Nathan Penny says climate change and a net carbon economy by 2050 is one policy which will stick – even with a future change in government. Agriculture will be helped along in the first instance with a subsidy of 95% to begin with, Penny told the conference. “But once the climate commission meets and makes it recommendations
There she flows! Fiona Crombie, Central Plains Water Ltd’s (CPWL) environmental technical lead, explains the irrigation scheme to Federated Farmers’ dairy and sharemilker section members in Canterbury, last week. Behind her is the end of the stage one canal near Hororata, with a pumping station intake at left. The inlet for the big stage two development, now being built, is about 700m upstream. The three-day meeting of the Feds’ joint dairy and sharemilking section councils started with a bus tour of CPWL sites and a visit to the Synlait plant at Dunsandel. – PHOTO NIGEL MALTHUS
these will start to be enacted,” he says. “Our view is that these policies are likely to stick even with a change of government. “There is broad support for climate change policies. “Although some farmers and the rural sector may not be too keen, given the urban support for climate change policies, even if there was a change of government at the next election we believe climate change policies would be likely to stick long term.”
BYE BYE BUNNIES THE RELEASE of a new strain of calici virus has been welcomed by the Minister of Agriculture. Damien O’Connor says the new strain of the disease RHDV1 K5 is the right decision and will benefit, in particular, the South Island, and all New Zealand. It will be released nationwide in March and April, especially targeting rabbit ‘hot spots’. O’Connor asks regional councils to ensure they have a good plan that maximises the release of the virus. RHDV1 K5 is not a new virus – it’s a Korean strain of the existing RHDV1 virus already widespread in NZ and only effects the common European rabbit. The virus causes hepatitis and blood clotting in the rabbit, killing it fast. “I am told it’s a faster-acting virus than the previous and one and we hope it will rapidly knock rabbit numbers to a point where [follow-up shooting will make a difference].” O’Connor says allowing rabbits to multiply leads to land degradation and environmental destruction on farmland and the conservation estate. Calici virus is the most effective known method of killing them, he says. “Farmers over the years have told me that killing rabbits has had an immediate impact, on production and on the environmental diversity of their land. While it’s not a silver bullet for rabbit control it’s expected to greatly assist the control of wild rabbit populations.” – Peter Burke • More on page 9
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