OPINION
The public can be forgiven for believing farmers got a free ride from Government's announcements on emissions reductions last month. Some commentators and, even cartoonists, have proposed that farming has been let off the hook.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It was remiss of Ministers Robertson, Shaw and O'Connor to not be more explicit that agriculture will be taxed as soon as the current negotiations with the He Waka Eke Noa group are concluded. Currently, this partnership is proposing annual taxes of more than $400 million per year when in full operating mode.
An average dairy farm in the South Island will be expected to pay more than $50,000 a year in taxes, which is severe, especially on high-debt properties.
Agriculture fought hard and won the right to figure out its own plans for reducing its emissions. The Government established a partnership – He Waka Eke Noa – compromising industry, Māori, and government ministry representatives.
Many farmers strongly disagree with the partnership's findings and are expecting to fight hard to prevent the form and levels of taxing proposed by the partnership. They know that Minister James Shaw, under pressure from his green supporters, is proposing even more stringent measures than He Waka Eke Noa suggested. Their rising anger will inevitably spill out onto the streets.
What drives this anger? Farmers are frustrated with the growing burden of regulations, unworkable, unjustified, difficult to understand, and expensive. Why, when rural New Zealand held the country's economy together during Covid does the Government keep adding new rules, new costs, more bureaucracy, and new distractions?
Farmers are not denialists. Their views on climate change simply reflect the community's view.
They view the use of the base date of 1990 for measuring their emissions as deceptive. They recognise that methane emissions rose between 1990 and 2005 but they have fallen steadily since. Methane lasts only 9 to 10 years in the atmosphere, so falling levels since 2005 mean farmers have achieved "net zero" and are actually contributing to cooling the planet. The amount of ruminant methane from farms is trending down.
The Climate Commission said if ruminant methane emissions are stable, as they are now, then no new warming is occurring. Imagine a room with 100 people in it. If two are entering and two are leaving, no change. If two are entering and three are leaving, the number of people reduces. It is that easy. Farmers are helping to lower temperatures already.
Farmers know full well that the Paris Agreement in Article 2 (b) said countries should not reduce food production in their pursuit of climate goals. Proposals that will reduce our production by up to 15 per cent violate the agreement.
What makes even less sense is that cutting production in New Zealand, where farmers have the planet's lowest carbon footprint and the most efficiently produced food, will lead to some other country taking up the shortfall – people must eat. Any measure imposed that reduces food production in New Zealand will increase overall global emissions. Farmers think that is illogical virtue-signalling.
Farmers cannot understand why their efforts to reduce CO2 are ignored. Their continuing production efficiency gains will lower emissions without the need for taxation. They use CO2 every day to grow grass and their shrubs and trees. It involves the carbon cycle and photosynthesis completing a natural cycle. They watch the Government pay overseas companies big money to plant pine trees to sequester CO2 but plan to do the very opposite to farmers sequestering CO2 – tax them and tax them hard. Farmers cannot see any justice in that policy.
Fossil fuel emitters do not have a natural offset for their CO2 emissions. Farmers do.
Farmers know many climate scientists, including leading IPCC authors such as Professor Myles Allen, claim that in a stable methane atmosphere, as we have in New Zealand, that the 48 per cent of emissions attributed to agriculture is 400 per cent overstated. Allen and several New Zealand scientists suggest the focus be on actual warming potential, not gas concentration or molecular potency. They see the Climate Commission's excuse for not adopting this overstatement as specious. The commission was concerned we might suddenly rapidly increase dairy numbers – a practical impossibility.
Farmers are investing heavily in methane-reducing technologies. Taxing them simply reduces their ability to find lasting and effective means and stifles their overall role in land stewardship.
Farmers will pay. They do so more out of political necessity than scientific proof. If the Government persists in damaging farming with unreasonable levels they can expect a backlash.
Rural folk feel betrayed and ignored. Their anger and frustration is palpable and real.
• Owen Jennings is the manager of Facts About Ruminant Methane (FARM) and a former national president of Federated Farmers.