There is perhaps a little irony in that the same week Rabobank put out their ‘white paper’ “Steering into Food Transition” rethinking the climate change challenge for New Zealand food and agribusiness, the Groundswell movement were having a protest driving tractors over the Auckland Harbour bridge. With only 10 tractors in the convoy the ‘protest’ probably failed to achieve the profile expected or desired.
It is perhaps a little unfair to say Groundswell are reluctant to move into the 21st century (already 2 decades into it) but the Rabobank document is certainly forward looking and thought provoking.
In a section headed “Check your mindset” the authors challenge farmers to accept change is coming if not already here “Climate change is coming and so is government regulation and consumer demand for farmers and growers to produce more food in a transparent, socially and environmentally responsible way”.
The central theme of the paper is that agriculture needs to feed many more people while having a reducing carbon footprint. When it comes to production, they have shown that agriculture is carrying the country.
However, there is also a reminder that New Zealand has the sixth highest carbon footprint per head of capita in the Annex 1 (Developed) countries and largely because of our agricultural involvement. The conflict is that despite that ‘we’ are among the most efficient at what we produce with the dairy graph below an example of this. It is doing this and achieving carbon reductions that is creating the headache.
Quoting international studies, they highlight that between 2010 – 2050 world food supplies need to increase by between 35 – 56% and this in a global environment facing more and greater production constraints between climate extremes and political uncertainties.
It would be easy under these scenarios to argue that agriculture should be outside of any carbon reductions targets and be allowed to operate as a business as usual model. However, if a BAU model for all agriculture does persist globally then agriculture by itself would be responsible for taking global warming up to +2c temperature by 2050.
They point to a number of things that can be done to improve the status of agriculture from stepping up technological change, better training and reduced waste.
They also move into the fringes of the forestry debate without taking a firm stance but advocate for “responsible offsetting”. I wonder how they would view today’s news that the large East Coast farm sales (Matanui and Huiarua stations) have been approved by the OIO. Given that there is meant to be a net benefit to society from these sales for them to be approved and among other impacts it will mean closing a school and depriving the East Coast of yet more population the OIO must assume the benefits of carbon sequestration trumps food and local populations.
An irony here is that among the new ownership is IKEA which have been implicated in unsustainable logging in Eastern Europe. Anyway, I digress. It will perhaps come as some relief to those dairy farming that a USA study quoted in the Rabobank report suggests that removing dairy from the agriculture picture would only globally reduce (agriculture) emissions by between 6.8 -12% and given the release of another paper showing how plant based milks are “nutritionally risky” when compared to animal milk it does show that we need to remind ourselves that there are benefits that come with dairy milk.
As much as farming, banks also strongly dislike uncertainty and with increasing impacts from climate extremes they do recognise that government has a role in shaping the regulatory environment and through it all there will be some farmers who will exit the industry willingly or otherwise. Rabobank are taking a role in the changes required to move into the new paradigm with incentives in lending and trying to help remove bottlenecks in the way of innovation. Given they are a specialist agricultural bank their input into how they see the future is relevant and should be taken note of.
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