This week on Factum-Agri farmer Sara Black joined me to discuss how the summer season is going and what the big issues are for farmers currently.
Sara Black and husband Matt, with their two children, farm at Marble Point Station, which is a 2400ha hill country property located halfway between Hanmer Springs and Culverden in North Canterbury. They farm in an equity partnership with the Wilson family from West Melton. 4,000 Corriedale ewes and 400 Angus breeding cows are farmed between Marble Point and their 70ha block down the road. The 70ha block is a substantial help because there they finish all their progeny.
The summer has been pretty kind to the Black’s, they have picked up reasonable amounts of rain over the last couple of months which has keep the grass growing and the creeks flowing. They measured 70 mills and the gauge over January which has kept them ticking along.
“I think Canterbury by and large is faring pretty well this summer which is reflective of the La Niña system, so it's been slightly cooler and there's been a little bit more humidity and rain, which makes a bit of a change from the typical hot dry East Coast summer.”
Farmers might be enjoying a bit more grass about over summer, one thing they are not enjoying is softer lamb prices. Demand from China for sheep meet has dropped due to strict lockdowns and tighter economic conditions, which has forced some consumers to trade down to lower-priced proteins. The recovery of lamb production in Australia will also increase supply to market which could further support lower farmgate returns on sheep meat for New Zealand into 2023.
“The lamb price has been pretty disappointing this year because we've had a pretty good lambing, the weather's been good and the lambs have grown out really well. But as the season's gone on, we've just watched the schedule slowly drop down. This week I think it's sitting at about $6.50 a kilo whereas this time last year it was closer to $8.00. So we budgeted reasonably conservatively that the prices we're getting obviously below that figure, and that is going to have an impact on our budgeting and our planning in the short term.”
Sara says that downward pressure on lamb prices adds to pressures that exist with mounting policy pressure. Sequestration is not being accurately recognised or measured.
“The reality is we have large stands of existing native bush, Manuka, Kanuka, and Kowhai on the farm and a significant amount of scrub such as Matagouri, and possibly close to 1000 hectares of tussock land. All of that when you look around is sequestering carbon, but it doesn't meet the criteria of the ETS. So potentially we may be carbon neutral if you took into account all that vegetation, but the equation just doesn't include that second half. And so we worked out our carbon footprint last year, and based on the suggested pricing the annual liability without discounts came out at over $230,000 a year. It's a significant cost that would mean we would have to change something that we were doing, we couldn't keep farming while bearing that cost year to year. Which seems crazy when sheep and beef farmers have one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world. And yet by pricing emissions we would be reducing our production which would potentially move offshore.”
Yes, it’s election year and it will be a significant one for this nation and for our farmers. If we are going to bring in a emissions tax on farmers, then get the equation right. We have to recognise and calculate all on-farm sequestration, because unless this is counted there can’t be a net emission profile.
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Angus Kebbell is the Producer at Tailwind Media. You can contact him here.
20 Comments
Same goes for anyone with existing stands of vegetation – to get us to meet our carbon emissions we need new, additional retirement from grazing, not count what is already there. Given this location I expect that at least 10% of the farm could be permanently retired from grazing with very little production effect. We farmers are all in this together – time to lift our game and retire areas that (with the benefit of hindsight) should never have been cleared from bush in the first place
Grazing produces methane not carbon. Methane is a shortlived greenhouse gas so farms such as these do not need to continue to sequester more and more carbon as they are not adding to greenhouse gases, the methane produced this year replaces that produced in years prior, no net gain.
Just because there is lots of carbon stored on the farm in native bush and scrub that does not mean they are providing ADDITIONAL sequestration every year to compensate for the methane emissions from livestock - the scrub/bush may be in steady state and may have been in existence pre 1990. The wording of the quotations in this piece implies to me that this point is not understood.
See reply to previous post above. Targeting methane is a short term strategy to get industrial and urban areas off the hook from disruptive carbon targeting that is actually a can being kicked down the road. IE BP saying they being asked to invest in fossil fuel programs to meet energy requirements.
The split gas approach recognises this with only a % of methane needing to be accounted for. The balance is cyclical. The debate is what % needs to reduce. It ranges from 10% to 40%.
Again even under GWP* people need to read and understand how it works. We can have extra methane since industrialisation, as we have all added in the 100s of years. But any extra from a point is zero tolerance. So countries like ours with well developed Ag systems can argue we aren’t adding much more and only need to do a little reduction. The problem comes for poor developing countries who want to grow their Ag side - any increase is 100% penalised. In effect it’s an international grand parenting problem. Should the developed countries give some of their methane allowed allocation to the poor so they can grow and we take responsibility for that methane ie reduce it - equity and fairness.
Its the same within NZ Ag - sheep and beef have reduced as numbers fall but it’s been taken up by dairy. As all Ag groups work together this isn’t recognised.
If you split it by sector sheep and beef would probably get a credit and dairy carry the main load but it has been agreed, by the Ag sector, that they will be as one.
This is a within sector issue - not government - decide how you want to do it.
Plus look quietly and rationally at the options to manage this instead of anger and ranting - that gets you no where but further down a hole.
Angus, I suggest you do some homework and learn how sequestration works around the world. These rules for existing pre90 vegetation are the same everywhere. We aren’t being picked on. Simply banging on saying it’s unfair is intellectually poor and doesn’t help explain the options to people.
How about exploring what the actual options are. There’s plenty of farmers who have and are very happy along with there ability to present a product that can stand rigorous assessment that they are carbon neutral. Let alone the extra income opportunities.
Our customers are wanting this like it or not.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/opinion/300778264/new-zealand-…
this is rules are right mentality which is not always the case and a bit patronising. what will happen here is that the tax being paid by these farmers and other people around New Zealand will be used to pay investors to buy this farm and cover it with pines. this is the rules of that game but a terrible long-term result for nz society.
Have you done your homework Jack? Carbon bludgers get mad money for pines but sheep and beef farmers get nothing for the carbon sequestered as a part of normal grazing practice. Not fair, not right and not going to change the climate one bit.
"This study is one of the few that have investigated the carbon balance of an intensively grazed temperate pasture system on mineral soils. Despite the climatic extremes during the study (a severe one in 100 year drought in 2008 and a very cold winter in 2009), the site was a net C sink in both years, with a NECB of 590 ± 560 kg C ha−1 and 900 ± 560 kg C ha−1 for 2008 and 2009, respectively. This C sequestration at Scott Farm [Waikato] is consistent with most other EC studies of grazed pastures on mineral soils"
Carbon balance of an intensively grazed temperate pasture in two climatically contrasting years
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880911003288
I dont normally bother to answer this stuff.
Im spending all my time at the end of my career, an awful lot pro bono, trying to save hill country farmers by adapting to the change occurring. The constant line thats all good on the farm if we just remove the "regulations", Government and that nothing to see here on climate etc is whats actually destroying farmers - emotionally and financially.
The cold reality is some farm systems don't work anymore for factors beyond anyones control for an awful lot of people and land in NZ.
The worst thing is people (Industry leaders, Farm bodies etc etc) telling them they are the back bone of NZ, they are profitable and the future is bright. Do you get how soul destroying this is to someone who knows they aren't making any money and going backwards (even with any regulations stripped away) - to sit in a room being told this when they are not doing this - they feel like absolute losers and are completely lost.
This is causing more mental distress than anything - I know because I am sitting at tables with farming families listening to them tell me this and seeing the grief. Blind dogma and an inability to see change, driven primarily by markets, is causing more damage than anything. Nothing positive, no answers - just carry on as we have in the past.
Heaven help those poor farmers in for a smashing from Gabrielle after Halle and the others in the last 2 years.
Your "answer: has nothing to do with sequestration. There have been unprofitable farms since big J was a cowboy. Taking all the carbon loot for pine trees and not paying for grazing sequestration isn't helping profitability, is raising their capital costs and ruling out land purchase for economy of scale.
It is intellectually poor/fraudulent to suggest native stands reached steady state in 1990 and haven't grown since. There are carbon positive farms being logged right now to blanket plant in pines. Guess those customers you speak of just don't pay enough compared to eye watering sums being paid out for carbon bludging.
"The results indicate a strong seasonal cycle in terrestrial land fluxes from the South Island of New Zealand, especially in western regions covered by indigenous forest, suggesting higher photosynthetic and respiratory activity than is evident in the current a priori land process model. On the annual scale, the terrestrial biosphere in New Zealand is estimated to be a net CO2 sink, removing 98 (±37) Tg CO2 yr−1 from the atmosphere on average during 2011–2013. This sink is much larger than the reported 27 Tg CO2 yr−1 from the national inventory for the same time period."
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/17/47/2017/
I wish you were right , but the sad fact is most native forest is declining , or at best staying still, because of the impact of possums and other pests.
There is some talk of allowing carbon credits to be claimed where Native bush has grown because of pest control, but that would be very hard to measure.
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