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% to 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 10 years.
Looked at another way, non-primary-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 carcass 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 470 kg, produced 243 kg Milksolids, and ate 3.87 tonnes of dry matter. By 2019/20, the average cow still weighed 470 kg (by coincidence) but produced 376 kg 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 0.8 kg of Milksolids per kg liveweight to 1.0 kg 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 kg and 1.2 kg 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% to 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.
*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. You can contact him directly here.
102 Comments
'Without exports, New Zealand cannot fund imports. And without imports, the whole economy falls over.'
The 'whole economy' is a gone goose anyway. It was unsustainable - as in: unmaintainable. So with respect, that's a straw-man argument.
Setting up a sustainable - maintainable long term - 'economy' is the only valid goal, and requires a full systemic appraisal, not just methane or, or or... A big issue will be turning a linear system (extractive in terms of minerals, offshore acreage, aquifers, biodiversity, fossil fuels, soil quality) into a circular one. That implies return of city effluent to the land (Adelaide went down this track a few year ago - maybe worth a follow-up?)
A big issue will be that all 'economies' can be expected to be under stress from here on; farmers and urban folk both over-indebted. Each will demand of the other; neither will be able to deliver. Rather than 'talking past', we need a national conversation about how to remove the debt burden, so that all sectors can adjust.
Nz seems to have ignored the obvious for 15 years and continues to do so.
We currently have:
- exports based on primary industries which are environmentally disasterous. And seemingly missing any urgency to develop a plan to resolve this.
- a focus away from tech and into housing to create a massive asset bubble
- (for primary industries) a the biggest export market as a dictatorship that may be threatened by geopolitics
- sounds like there is significant debt in the primary industry sector too (how did that happen).
Where is the strategy from government to
- urgent focus to develop export business outside of primary industries
- closer monitoring of the primary sector to have almost real time visibility of climate fixing changes and monitoring of prgress vs plan and what plans actually are.
- gradual introduction of CGT and any other measures to force investment away from housing in the medium to long term, balancing the economy and driving investment to climate tech and other export businesses (future xeros etc)
Its not feasible to write off debt nor to ask climate change to slow itself. So government needs a better strategy asap.
Returning city effluent to land sounds good, but as Rotorua found out when they sprayed theirs over their pine plantation there can be a downside to it
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-daily-post/news/row-over-forest-sewa…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-democracy-reporting/119…
Fonterra won't allow cows to be fed feed grown off land that has had treated human effluent sprayed over it. The e-coli risk is too great, as well as, it is not a good marketing strategy to say that 'your milk has been produced by cows eating feed fertilised from treated human waste.'
So how does Rotorua get all the contaminants out of the waste stream? Biological? OK can be steralised. Heavy metals? Some if not all. Chemicals, pharmaceuticals? Probably not. Expect an uncontrolled dose of blood thinners, antipsychotics and oestrogens with your evening meal. Without going into all the other toxins flushed into the waste stream of course.
They do this in the UK. End up with fields with high levels of heavy metals...
Then there's the "other stuff" too
Beef could probably reach its target by swapping out a percentage of straight beef cattle for dairy beef, and encouraging farmers to grow their cattle faster and process them earlier. There would have to be market signals for that to happen, lots are set in their ways.
Currently, meat processer want 200 kg plus hook weight, or the price paid drops significantly. That means any beef that don't get there by Autumn, are carried through another winter. So that's 2 3 months of supplement feed to just maintain body weight.
Massey did a study of raising Friesian bulls to be killed at 9_12 months, it was more efficient, but again the drawback was processes didn't want them
200kg hook weight is only around 400kg liveweight, most cattle will do that provided they are reasonably well fed by 18 - 20 months.
More of a problem is huge rangy cattle that are hard to fatten even by 27 months, but if there was a premium for early finished beef more bulls with that characteristic would be bred and used. Some of it is lack of incentive, people grow on killable cattle because they like to or think it's more profitable.
Normally yes , with the dry summers right up to May , not so easy. Best way is to accept you would need to feed supplement through the winter , and feed it to them in summer (if they'll eat it ) , and Autumn. Then you just need the works to have space , which they don't in a dry summer /autumn. very frustrating when you have animals + /-20 kg short , and you need to gamble in sending them in.
I have done the analysis on killing more but lower carcass weight cattle on my farm. I.e yearling Friesian bulls instead of 2 yr.
Result was a much much more efficient system interims of feed utilisation and much more kg of meat per ha. But a significant drop in profit. Mostly due to the discounts applied to killing cattle under 320kg carcass weight.
I think this is key to reducing numbers yet maintaining production.
Taking a cattle beast through a second winter should not make financial sense.
So, our customers(overseas) need to be convinced that small cuts are better - for the planet and themselves!
Regarding dairy beef I make the following observation: AI for replacements is first off the block during mating. Maybe it should be at the tail end of mating to allow the beef byproduct to have more time to grow - though the dairy replacements would be a bit younger and hence smaller.
Finte, the problem doing beef at the start is the dairy heifers wont be up to weight for there first mating. Also know plenty of farmers running bulls with there poor cows and using sexed semen on there better cows. You can also run into a problem on trying to sell dairy beef if it's not the perfect type. Lots of finishes around me wont touch dairy beef, needs to be traditional beef.
If there were emission price signals, so that you were penalised for higher emission cattle, people might change their minds about running steers to 3 years old or refusing to touch dairy beef.
For myself, I have plenty of heifers killable at 18-20 months, 220 - 240 CW, but I prefer to carry them through to 250-280 kg in October when the schedule is higher and works space easier to get. I could be persuaded to change if there was a financial incentive.
One of the most interesting and exciting ideas I have seen was a UK based trial using additives in feed to increase energy conversion in the gut, the energy that previously went into methane went into live weight and milk, the results were looking like a game changer for both emissions and productivity in all ruminants. From memory it was a garlic derived product. I'm not sure where that went but I would like to believe investment in science can go a long way to help us all.
You are advocating what we did when we began using stored solar energy (wood) to cook food - thus relieving our gut energy demands..... Maybe we should be boiling baleage?
But we need to act NOW - more extending and pretending will not suffice (no matter how much farmers and politicians wish to can-kick). The science you need to react to, is here, now.
I saw Prince Charles awarding a company with a cow face mask concept recently that has potential for a significant impact oncattle methane output.
What have we invented here to help our farmers? (possible we have some great invention stories and the newspapers put those stories a few pages after the house price gains/losses articles - so we never hear them)
Given the obvious implications for everyone in NZ of doing nothing, how about introduction of a new tax on high-mid level earners, banks and a slowly increasing CGT on property investment -> money that directly feeds tech awards and grants for tech businesses that help farmers and primary industries solve climate related issues.
Kill a few birds with the same stones - we can throw a ton of cash at growing a new, potential export industry that help our farmers and primary industries meet targets faster, try and divert investment into that from housing. Maybe try to attract tech companies and tech staff from overseas who excel in AgClimate and so on.
Probably a bigger version of calf covers, to keep the cows warm in winter , would reduce the amount of feed used just to keep warm .as would shelter/ shetlerbelts. of course shelterbelts are percieved to reduce grass growth. but you should see the gras growth in the shade of a shelterbelt in summer. swings and roundabouts, but we are only seeing the swings.
not at all. Works on the basis that most cow methane is actually emmitted as burps. Thus i believe if you filter the methane when they burp.. and convert to something that can be stored... presto less methane.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/04/29/prince-charles-prize-backs-fa…
High-mid level earners are already paying the bulk of the taxes. Need to focus on getting tax revenue from elsewhere, whether CGT or - better - an LVT on the unimproved value of land. Can't just keep walloping the same productive earners over and over again and still hope for investment in tech that'll alleviate agricultural issues.
I know KW's article is around actual current legislation. We need to go back at least one if not two steps.
"New Zealand agriculture is required to achieve a 10% reduction in its methane emissions by 2030. This is set down in legislation." Change the legislation.
"2050 target, also laid out in legislation, has been set in the range of 24% to 47%, with the specific requirement within this range still to be determined." Again change the legislation. 24% absolute maximum, preferably much less.
I haven't found out how they arrived at the methane tonnage starting point but there is another figure that needs scrutiny.
National have a lawyer as their CC representative and wouldn't be surprised if he has read no IPCC, COPxx or CCC report. Not sure what National stance is on CC but its probably a slightly watered down Labour version. ACT might reduce the targets considerably.
So to fully screw the country I might get a rush of blood to my head and vote Green. Then people will realise what a train smash they are.
I only see bad economic times ahead as we add considerable cost and complexity to our primary production.
China laid 6,000 km of train track in Africa last year alone, they are transforming it into their larder. We can take the moral high ground on emisisons, but how are we going to fund our current account? In the meantime most of Africa, Russia, China, India and much of South America will be energy and primary produce independent and trade between themselves.
Great joke Te Kooti. The Europeans tried that in the 1800s, early 1900s. Great start, but then a total financial disaster. That is why the Chinese are trying to negotiate the bringing in of their own police and armed forces to protect the things they built, from the people they said they built them for. They have already lost their African investments, and are in the process of losing their Asian and Pacific investments as well. Their only hope was importing forces totally independent of any local government to do their policing. Haven't been allowed to in most countries. Only Tibet and Hong Kong so far, from memory.
Appreciate the comment and insight, thank you.
Is there a correlation between breed mix and milk production efficiency? Jersey Friesian cross is celebrated as being efficient, but up until now friesian genetics seems to be more popular nationally than jersey.
Would milk production efficiency correlate to meat production? The meat industry seems reluctant to evolve and incorporate jersey genetics.
Reluctance is due to the lower mature weight hence lower carcass weight. And the meat processors all reduce the price the lighter the carcass is. So less profitable for the farmer.
If these discounts were removed then I think there would be a major change especially in the bull finishing model.
Keith - I agree with your view in regards to becoming more efficient at extracting more production per animal eg kgms/kglw, however to do this will require a large capital investment in the form of cow barns and supplementary feeding etc. How is NZ Agr going to afford to do this on top of all of the limiting factors already present in NZ (e.g. wet soils? Tax Incentives?)
It seems contradictory that to increase animal performance, would require an increase in supplementary feeding. Wouldn't supposed livestock performance from supplementary feeding be offset from the energy and emissions cost of sourcing and feeding the supplement? It might be more a question of breed mix.
To get high animal performance they need to be fully fed 365 days a year (or as many as possible), the problem we have with an all grass diet is that pasture production ranges from 5kgdm/day to 80kgdm/day. As a result of this we use supplements during the low pasture growth periods in order to carry a stocking rate that can handle the grass grown in the spring.
Walking animals long distances also burns energy at the rate of a litre of milk per km walked. Housing cows for periods of the year is likely to be the only way NZ dairying can be environmentally compliant long term (as Keith has pointed out in his previous reports re Mootels). The issue is that the margins are to small to support the huge capital investment to set this type of operation up.
11 sq metres would be very high for Canterbury assuming the compost shelter is used predominantly in winter, plus at nights in the second half of autumn. But yes, considerable investment would be necessary and that is currently off-putting for farmers as they wait to see how regulatory rules evolve.
KeithW
How long would a farmer wait before they have confidence in the regulatory landscape?
It seems to always the farmers that have the extra costs added to their tab. What about other industries that hang off of farming and have profited along the way? Banks, fert, PKE etc? I guess they get to just walk away guilt free?
If NZ decides that we no longer see the Key government vision of milk flowing everywhere as what we want as a nation, then if we're going to get anywhere quickly transitioning to something more palatable to all, and not cutting off all those export dollars, then there has to be a better more collaborative way forward surely.
If we dont change faster on our own it will be forced on us.. with no time to change.
China and the west may make us choose between them before long. I am not that keen on being controller by Xi and i suspect most people would feel the same. So half our exports are at risk.
The alternative is to try to sell our wares to the west.. but if we dont keep pace with our climate change policies ( surely its bad enough we have to transport our stuff half way round the world to their market) then their local providers will use it as an great excuse to block market access for our products.
From past observations I have come across several instances where farmers have reduced their herd but subsequently have had an increase in production, in most cases to their surprise. This has obviously been due to feed increase for remaining cows , a friend recently did this took out 12% of low performing cows and vat increased. I don't know how prevalent this is but noticed in Australia also I have seen similar examples , one farmer I worked for I persuaded to look hard at individual production reduced about 12% and also increased production. In the 70s I worked in the waikato harvesting maize for grain , I don't know what the markets for grain are now but they were quite buoyant then . There is quite a lot of maize grown now for additional feed for herds in some cases using effluent as a major part of the fertilizer required to do so , could a portion of some dairy farmers switch to this while reducing herd size ?
1
Question 1.
How come we can afford to subsidise offshore corporations to plant trees to suck up CO2 and in the same breath tax farmers who suck up CO2 to grow grass?Question 2.
Why is Article 2 (b) of the Paris Agreement ignored when it states clearly that countries should not reduce food production in their pursuit of emission goals?Question 3.
Why are we taking unilateral action that will cut production in NZ that has the planet’s lowest carbon footprint when we know that other countries, with a worse record, will make up the shortfall, leading to increased emissions overall?Question 4.
Why is 1990 used as a base date for measuring ruminant emissions when methane emissions only last only 9 to 10 years in the atmosphere?Question 5.
Why is the Climate Change Commission’s finding ignored that showed when ruminant methane emissions are stable or falling slightly as they have since 2005, farmers have achieved ‘net zero’ and are literally contributing to cooling the planet?Question 6.
Why do many scientists, green lobbyists, media and politicians focus on greenhouse gas concentration, volume and molecule strength and not on warming ability, especially as IPCC scientists claim when methane emissions are stable, as they are in NZ, the measurement we currently use – GWP100 – is 400% overstated?Question 7.
Was the Climate Change Commission’s proposal to tax farmers for their emissions determined solely because they could not find a way to adequately reduce fossil fuel produced CO2?Question 8.
Why have recent science findings been ignored that show methane is a poor absorber of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, unable to impact temperature and dominated by the main radiation absorber, water vapour, which is 9,000 times more concentrated?Question 9.
If all methane is 0.00018% of the atmosphere and ruminant methane is 14% of that or 0.0000252% of the whole atmosphere what warming, in degrees Centigrade, can be attributed to NZ’s 1% of the planet’s ruminants?
Question 10.
When the GHG Research Centre hasn’t come up with any usable technologies to reduce agricultural emissions after 19 years of research, and a $200 million spend, how is the new funding of $300 million expected to contribute?
from FARM Robin Grieve and Owen Jennings
No party will act on transport to the degree it needs to , until after the next election. To do so is political suicide. But it has to come, and i don't agree that been able to point the finger at agriculture is the reason it is not been targeted. Unless it is with cross party support , but National and ACT know more roads/cheaper petrol is a vote winner.
Everybody is in denial , and wants to kick the can down the road.
The transport comment reminds me of the British TV show Yes Minister.
In the show the Minister's advisor dissuades him from investing in a new transport system because:
- transport infrastructure is expensive, so levies will have to be raised (and no-one likes paying levies)
- transport projects are always behind time
- transport projects require changes of behaviour (a behaviour change while the project is underway (you can't use certain roads because they're being built on) and a behaviour change after it has been built (use the train instead of the car))
and most importantly
- transport projects take so long you're not even in office when people finally reap the rewards of the infrastructure upgrades
It's a funny joke in the TV show .... but sadly very true of real life I fear ...
Because people are bad at math. They do not understand the difference between CO2 that was locked underground in the form of coal, gas and oil for millions of years being released into the atmosphere where it will remain for thousands of years. Versus a natural methane cycle of a few decades in duration. Landuse changes can increase the stock of methane in the atmosphere as a one-off but doesn't lead to ongoing increases after that. A burping cow is not the equivalent of a belching car. A farm can reabsorp methane. A road cannot reabsorp CO2.
On the left the likes of vegan Greenpeace obstructs this ignorance being educated away. And on the right the oil, gas and road lobby do the same. Internationally few countries have similar emission profiles to NZ so we don't have allies when it comes to establishing climate change rules.
Brendon - but without the below-ground source, the above-ground belching wouldn't be as much. Because without it, there would be south of 3 billion humans here, now. And living shorter lives. Ex Faber-Bosch, ex rainforest-intrusion, ex phosphate draw-down, how many cows do you think we could support?
My take is that it is just another religion. Beats going to church every Sunday. Every bit as faithbased and irrational as all the others. I have never actually met anyone who thinks that NZ's cows are ruining the world's atmosphere. Can someone please put their name up if they believe this?
Hi Keith great article well researched,- I was really interested in your figures of liveweight per hectare per kg of milksolids produced in relation to methane emissions.My herd produced 480kg milksolids per cow/cows weight 450kg @ 3 cows per hectare.I feed 2kg of barley/DDG consistently every day of lactation & I add rumensin rumen modifier to the meal.How would my herd stack up with these figures for what is required for methane reduction going forward.Regards
Dairyfarmer joe,
My estimate is that your farming system produces about 13% less emissions per kg of Milksolids than an average NZ dairy farm. To get more accurate I would need to know a few other details, for example your herd replacement rate. So this is just an approximate estimate.
KeithW
Yes, but feeding 2 kg of grain per day is not the only way to reduce emission intensity. And there will be a range of regulatory constraints and land taken out of production elsewhere in NZ which is part of the bigger equation. Also, feeding supplements is the only proven way (so far) to add probiotics that will inhibit methane-producing bacteria. Nothing is simple!
A lot depends on what question is being asked. For example, if the question is how to produce a given quantity of milk with minimum methane emissions, then the answer is that cows that are high producing relative to their liveweight will be the most efficient way of doing this. And use of supplements will come into that equation.
But if the question is how to minimise the emissions from a given farm, then the answer will be to use no supplements. Actually it will also be to get rid of all the cows and other ruminants.
KeithW
Such a well-researched piece Keith, thank you.
The key take out for me is that we are in a corner as a country here. We can squeeze every last drop of efficiency out of agricultural processes, but that won't get us anywhere near where we need to be in the 2030s - by which time targets and international obligations will have stiffened sharply as it becomes clear that we have less time than we thought. NZ is literally top of the global table for historic per capita emissions. We can't hope nobody notices.
The import / export equation you set out does however have some other variables. What could we import less of - fuel would be an obvious example, insurance and pension services another. What higher value products could we export more of - where do we have a competitive advantage (e.g. aluminium, higher education). Sadly, the kind of strategic thinking required to map these things out and make some hard choices seems to be completely missing at the moment.
Aluminum, currently we subsidise Tiwai to the tune of 0.6 million tonne of CO2. $50m? (That doesn't include the subsidised renewable power we give for SFA)
Education, true we pay nothing for the students to fly here despite polluting all the way here and back and increasing our total consumption while present.
Those two things make Agri look positively sustainable.
Its a simple idea. Make the animal more productive.
Yet if we ask a ewe to produce triplets, it bloody near kills her.
If hoggets lamb, it can cut a year off their life at the other end.
If we breed a cow to produce more kgms more dont get back in calf, then we end up with the current practise, instead of culling them, they head off to dry stock blocks for a year off while they recover and get in calf again. Every action has a reaction.
Yes we have improved animal productivity. But other problems have resulted that question the metric. ie you have to look deeper than kg milk solids per cow. In calf rate, culling % etc needs to be considered.
True, point taken Keith it was liveweight.
I would be interested as an ex calf rearer then fattener what the so called carbon/methane efficiency is of rearing a dairybeef calf on milkpowder compared to a beef cow rearing her calf.
Back in the day I used to do a lot of miles pulling the cafeteria. As well as picking up calves, picking up colostrum. Heating water to mix the powder. Then later on there was meal to get to the calves everyday.
Of course the milkpowder was dragged out of the udder of the dairy cow, it took many litres of water to produce the milk that then got heated and dehydrated out of said milk. Transported all over the place, sometimes overseas, then brought back to be changed from human grade to calf milk grade. Bagged and then freighted to farm. Good lord the mind boggles.
Of course the truly economically efficient answer is to trade carbon credits on international markets. The planet does not care if trees are planted on NZ hill country or elsewhere on the planet. Therefore they should be planted in the most efficient place (i.e. where there really is no good alternative use for the land, and where trees can grow). Ergo, international carbon markets. The CCC goals that mandate reductions without considering the basic economic principle of trade (that both parties to a trade are necessarily left better off) is just so dumb.
The government is not providing the best outcome. We could be net zero tomorrow for $600 million/annum using existing global carbon markets but the government chooses not to. The government energy policies lead to more coal being imported to NZ from Indo jungles and China/India ramping up coal use.
NZ pontificates about cow burps and improverishes itself with counter productive energy policy while - "The increased production and expanded capacity from mines is on track to add 10 percent to worldwide emissions of coal methane, threatening to undermine international efforts to tackle global warming, according to a recent estimate by Global Energy Monitor, a nongovernmental organization that tracks fossil fuel projects."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/27/china-methane-coal-clim…
Yes, the unintended consequences of our lack of participation in international carbon markets are obscene. The envionmentalists should be up in arms. Most are not, so why? I think it's because most of them really are utopian socialists who are still flogging a dead horse of central planning philosophy, and who simply cannot trust that a market mechanism can solve an environmental issue.
ab - both parties 'better off'?
What you are proposing is colonialism. You are proposing an 'over there somewhere' land grab - just as PKE is an 'over there somewhere' land grab.
You might like to read Cannery Row - written astutely as a Depression comment - where Mack and the Boys haggle for three days, then give the fellow an IOU that he probably still has...
You cannot 'pay' others enough, any more. Not enough planet, too many people. So your action will be displacement. That won't be 'of you', so it will be 'of them'. Simple logic.
Self-sufficiency - locally contained - is the only valid approach; all else is intrusion on others. Otherwise known as colonialism.
We already pay "others" enough hence every productive sheep and beef farm up for sale goes in to pine trees. We allow foreign investors to plant our farms but are holier-than-thou when it comes to doing the same offshore on unproductive land with triple the carbon sequestration rates of softwood pines.
1. Colonialism implies force. In principle, no one is forced into participating in carbon markets. Your charge is absurd.
2. Climate change is not a local problem, it is a global one. If each "locally contained carbon catchment" (there is no such thing, but I'll humour the idea) is obliged to be carbon neutral, you're missing out on the benefits of trade that, yes, make both parties better off.
That last point is economics 101. If trade does not make both parties better off, then one or both parties logically would be made worse off by a trade — and the trade would not happen.
Yeah, the dead planet. "Greening of the Earth and its Drivers - We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States."
Repeal the legislation as it is ludicrous and base don false science.
NZ methane production can be compared with this simile. If total world release of methane was an olympic swimming pool with Millions of Litres of water , the NZ component is .......ONE TEASPOON.
Do we really want to spend millions or Billions to reduce this? It is a non sense, we need to get off the farmers backs and get behind them, that is called Teamwork, they earn valuable export dollars for us and are very efficient. And dont get me started on water legislation...
If the total Methane production in the world is represented as an olympic pool of water (millions of litres) New Zealands share of this is .... ONE TEASPOON.
So any legislation is ridiculous and is just there because of the scam climate change theories put forward by the WEF. We should be getting behind our farmers not regulating them out of existence.
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