The Government will begin charging farm-level emissions at the “lowest possible price” from 2025 under a new plan released on Friday.
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced the decision in a press release which committed to setting up a system to measure and price agricultural emissions.
Farm-related emissions make up half of all New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, mostly methane, and have to be reduced in order to meet 2050 net-zero climate targets.
A partnership (He Waka Eke Noa) between the government and the farming sector was established to set up a pricing scheme, but negotiations reportedly broke down in May.
The new plan unveiled on Friday pushes the start date for emissions pricing back by nine-months, giving it a start date of October 2025.
O’Connor said the agriculture sector will have to adapt to a low emissions economy over the coming years, with or without Government intervention.
“It’s a fact of business in the 21st Century, but with the support of the government we can make that transition in a pragmatic way with the sector.”
The government had listened to farming leaders and was being “flexible” in its approach.
“In my meetings with sector leaders, they have reiterated their commitment to taking a collaborative approach on agricultural emissions through the sector partnership He Waka Eke Noa and acknowledge work is needed to meet our climate targets,” he said.
The plan will take a split-gas approach, which recognises that methane remains in the environment for a shorter period of time than carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.
Farms will have to begin reporting their emissions in the last quarter of 2024 and the pricing will begin the following year. This price will be set at “the lowest level possible to meet the reduction goals”.
Work will also be done to find “scientifically valid” ways to recognise on-farm emissions sequestration within the existing emissions trading scheme.
“Our decisions accommodate the key issues raised by the partners on timelines, and also set a framework for the factors that will determine the farm-level levy price,” O’Connor said.
A law change would be required to stop farms from being thrown into the Emissions Trading Scheme from January 2024, as currently legislated.
Parties pushback
The National Party previously supported the He Waka Eke Noa process but withdrew its support shortly after the Federated Farmers’ chair, Andrew Hoggard, signed up to be an Act Party candidate.
National announced a new plan which would delay emissions pricing until 2030.
An independent board would be established next year to implement a system, although the ministers of climate change and agriculture would both have a veto power.
Todd McClay, National’s agriculture spokesperson, said the party was confident climate goals could be met without “closing down” the farming sector.
“A strong agriculture sector means a strong New Zealand economy which will help us to reduce the cost of living, lift incomes and deliver the public services New Zealanders deserve.”
Labour’s plan also received criticism from the other side of the aisle. James Shaw, co-leader of the Green Party, refused to support the deal, despite being a Government minister.
“In my role as the Minister of Climate Change, I have made clear to my Labour colleagues why I do not support their preferred option for pricing agriculture emissions. We have agreed to disagree.”
He said there needed to be a cap on total emissions that reduces over time, like in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
“Our emissions only started to come down when I introduced a cap into the NZ ETS in our first term of Government.”
“We should learn from the mistakes that were made with the NZ ETS when it comes to a pricing system for the remaining half of our emissions that come from agriculture.”
The Green Party would set an annual cap on methane emissions and reduce it every year to make sure targets in the Zero Carbon Act were met.
Farmers would be able to trade units amongst themselves and set their own prices, without speculators or outside organisations.
“Landowners could earn revenue from the ETS by planting trees, rewetting peatlands or any other scientifically valid way of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” he said.
Teanau Tuiono, the Green Party’s agriculture spokesperson, said New Zealand faced “a stark choice”.
It could elect a National-Act government, which would delay emissions pricing, or a Labour-Green government that would “demand that agriculture fully plays its part in protecting the climate”.
Federated Farmers
Mark Cameron, the Act Party’s Primary Industries spokesperson, said Labour and the Greens were waging a “war on farmers”.
“In 57 days, farmers can have certainty that He Waka Eke Noa will be gone and they can carry on farming without the threat of emissions taxes hanging over their business,” he said.
The same press release quoted Act Party candidate, Andrew Hoggard, who played a key role in negotiating Labour’s emissions pricing plan as part of the He Waka Eke Noa partnership.
Hoggard stepped down from his role at Federated Farmers earlier than planned, when it was revealed he had signed on to stand as an candidate for the Act Party.
Federated Farmers no longer supports the He Waka Eke Noa plan. President Wayne Langford said the announcement was “tone deaf”.
"At a time when farmers are struggling to keep their heads above water and are looking for support, they’re instead being weighed down with more uncertainty, complexity, and cost,” he said.
Langford said the plan was not “designed in partnership with the sector” and it could lead to a 20% reduction in sheep and beef farming.
56 Comments
The market is showing we can't rely on high volume low value exports. the transition may be painful , but in the end we will all be better off , especially farmers.
No mention this is going to be heavily discounted , or of the $ 325 million Labour is allowing to help Farmers transition.
by 2030 we will be like North Korea.if we don't act now. Under ACT's proposals , North Korea will leave us behind.
I think he mispoke.
We have already had our version of Kim Jong Un..
she ran away in February and was replaced by the 55kg Ginger school kid that was front and center with all her work..
so not much change.(they pushed 3 waters through last night )
I think they are spiking the guns,a bit like Cullen did.
Labor are Dog tucker and they know it..
Not sure what NZ then has that the rest of world has a hankering for if it’s not food. Ask yourself, if Nth & Sth Islands both disappeared overnight under volcanic/seismic catastrophic events, how long would the rest of the world generally, take to get over the loss?
NZ's actual attraction these days for the rest of the planet is as a hypothetical climate bolthole for the Rich - as dubious as that is in itself . Maybe let in more Rich folks who can then offer to hire local staff for the mansions they build on ex Dairy farms . Kim Dotcom is already advertising I hear .
If only your assumptions were true - unfortunately the premium end gets smashed the hardest when people feel poorer - organic milk in Europe is in big trouble, people like niche stuff until they can’t afford it anymore. A downturn is a downturn whatever you are selling.
Theft from EVERY MEMBER OF EVERY GENERATION TO COME.
If they are alive, of course. The chances that we render ourselves extinct, are quite high at this stage. We are a species in overshoot; it might not have been too bad if we had stuck to grazing the planetary paddock; but we decided to graze the underground paddocks (fossil energy is merely old sunlight; the result of historic photosynthesis) as fast as we could, as well.
That was a temporary phase; a bit like growing your herd greater than acreage carrying-capacity via PKE - then not being able to get it. Carrying capacity of the planetary paddock, ex fossil acreage? 1-2 billion.
And every litre of that fossil acreage we burn, nobody ever can in the future. Do you think your children, and theirs, have no rights? Just ask'n...
It's rarely voluntary! Most humans would like to have children, or more children. If they could afford them, and trust that those children would have a better or at least equal life to their own more people would opt in. Costs and future prospects are considerations no one likes to talk about when they blow the demographic decline horn.
I'm guessing you two are farmers, or have skin in the game and need climate to not be so. The problem with that - actually there are two.
One is that Climate is merely one aspect of the Limits to Growth, coming to a planet near you, now.
The other is that if you posit stuff based on wishes, you get further and further from the truth (from fact) the longer you persist. Just logical, really; it's the only way it can be. Thus you have to deny more and more, until you end up - well, there are those who still think (?) that the whole shebang was created in 7 days, 4,000 years ago. Those folk do that (denial of science) because of a prior belief they don't wish to abandon. Same thing.
Upton Sinclair put you two very well a few years back: 'It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It' (1917 :)
Wrong.
I've never protested fossil energy - my POV is from a physics/energy perspective, and the pen-name I joined here 15 years ago with, might give you a clue. I assert that they're leaving us anyway, and we have to learn to live without them.
When you get mature enough not to have to be your projected image (car, clothes, whatever) then life can be a ton of fun.
Drop all preconceptions and assumptions.
Here we go. Some sunlight, millions of years ago, got photosynthesized into carbon-based lifeforms; plant and animal. Some of their remains, still containing carbon, got buried, crushed and cooked by tectonic forces. All at no effort from us.
Then we evolved, into an above-ground chemical mix which didn’t include that carbon. That chemical mix to a certain extent controlled the energy-in/low-grade-heat-out balance which is our global temperature, and which is more minutely marginally impacted than anything taught in economics.
We learned to use fire – breaking carbon bonds for the energy released in heat form. We used it to displace digestion energy, and we were on the first rung of the ladder. Unfortunately, we razed large areas of forest (carbon stores) for firewood, housing and (like the Maori, chasing the Moa to extinction and creating savannah in the process) chasing animals to eat.
So the first thing to understand about planting trees, is that we need to plant a heap before we’re even back to that pre-razing base-line. The second is that it is spatially impossible to plant enough to soak up the underground carbon, above ground. The fossil fuels represent too many sun-soaked acres; it cannot be done.
And unsurprisingly, given that there aren’t enough acres to sequester the underground-until-now carbon, we are seeing spatial land-use conflicts. Well surprise, surprise.
And we are seeing a lot of folk who don’t want to know what they don’t want to know.
The answer - if you hadn't worked it out from that - is that is is not possible, physically, to sequester the amount of fossil energy we turn into CO2. It would also require the diversion of some energy, and we are unable to repay debt as it is, so we are unlikely to allocate said energy.
You speak about using up the underground resources, but what about reuse of those that are now above ground, and utilising the incidental energy from manufacturing and waste that we currently don't in a circular economy? Surely we can only 'use resources up' if we don't recycle and capture every bit of waste and wasted energy available(including properly composting human remains back into the cycle of life, not burning off or locking away their valuable commodities).
For reference: Though life would be less convenient I don't mind regressing a bit. I think it would be good for us to use the bodies we were born into properly and more frequently, rather than sitting sedentarily so much. As a homebody I enjoyed the slow down of lock down, and the resulting quiet roads and shops when I had to make a trip out for essentials. I am of the firm belief that half the traffic on our roads is unnecessary and would very much be happy to pay more in rates to have public transport(including regional areas) expanded to utilise the rail lines that already exist but are rarely if ever used for light rail between districts.
According to research I read a couple of years back using atmospheric measurements from satellites etc - we are a net carbon sink but the researchers couldn’t work out exactly why - possibly something to do with Fiordland unexpectedly still sequestering vast amounts of CO2 - and of course no one actually knows how efficiently methane’s ‘sink’ function is working (it’s broken down by molecules released by pastures etc) - because we pay no attention to this at all.
Its kinda funny really. Taxing farmers that grow food. Taking gst off food. Taxing fuel. Making water more expensive. Fiddling while Rome burns. And I do not mean that in a climate heating up sense. Crikey our winters keep getting colder again. The last five years have been on a steady trajectory. Back to face burning frosts.
Our winters have changed again. Call it what you want. Its colder. For 5 years now and getting worse. Frosts are the biggest tell. 10 years ago for about 10 years the frosts disappeared. Central Plateau...and 4 or 5 a year. It was crazy. Now its possibly up to 60. Like it was 30 years ago.
You aren't listening Belle.
Learn the difference between climate and weather.
Now the oceans are warming, their capacity to do so is reducing (obviously). The heat is going into weather systems; it's heat which creates the pressure differences (Laws of Thermodynamics apply; it's heat which drives the pistons down and pushes your tractor along, too) which are our weather. More heat? More powerful systems, and/or more of them.
Those systems - courtesy of the coriolis effect, are circular (cyclones and anti-cyclones, mirror-image per hemisphere). Some of those circles pull polar air towards the equator, and if your part of the world feels that, well it is real.
But don't equate that with the global average temperature rising because the greenhouse effect is slowing the radiance of low-grade heat away into space. That is happening. Records being broken everywhere - but also records for area rainfalls; because those more-energy storm systems are packing more punch, drawing more moisture into themselves...... and dropping it on places which cannot cope. Ofen that system sets up the same sequence in the same area, as we've seen in the North Island of recent times. My betting is we'll see more.
I agree its changing. Working on roofs hasn't been much fun this year. nor the mud on the farmlet. Apart from this year been wet , and average temps up , but we still get a few frosts to stop growth etc. Not sure what time period they use to differeniate between climate and weather , i imagine it would be at least 5 years.
Hi Belle. Hope it's not too wet up your way. An experienced orchardist here told me the weather pattern we are in now - warmish winter, lack of snow etc, resembles 2013/14 year here. The prediction here is for a long cold spring (wouldn't be surprised as the warm weather we have been having, at times, this winter is crazy). In 2013/14 the hort folks had 29days in a row that they were frost fighting, and they are expecting something similar to happen again. There was also rain at a crucial time around Christmas that saw some orchards lose 100% of crop. So if we have rain you usually have fine weather - all the best for a good spring and summer.
Thanks CO, actually the last 2.5 months have been a bit drier than average. May was very very wet. So where is the snow then? The forecasters keep saying its snowing, and we keep getting freezing winds. I have never before been so consistent wearing gloves. I now wear 2 pairs of pants like I did when I was 30, and last night checking the cows I had 2 hats on and 2 jackets. Haha I cant be that fat to fit one jacket on top the other zipped up. Thats got to be good news.
The snow falls ocassionally, but then the winds will cause havoc and it's not there, or else we get warm weather and it doesn't last. We haven't had much rain this winter, so not much snow. The Clutha river is one of the lowest it's ever been, even a long time Teviot valley identity was commenting on how low it is down there. They maybe holding water up in Hawea but if they aren't then it could get interesting for water levels in summer.
That's compound misassumptions.
Money is only underwritten by energy - 100%. That's either side of taxing. It is also what farming is from a physics POV; all it does is turn many calories of fossil oil, into one calorie of food. Actually, that is very inefficient, besides being a temporary arrangement (via finite resource depletion).
Those points mean exporting for dollars, is a flawed approach (much like a massed version of Jack selling the family cow for some magic beans (probably the ones economists count). The real wealth is obviously having energy and having the stuff to apply it to - but we are trading that away as fast as we can, for digital representations of.... unrequited expectations.
Climate science has been contaminated by people pushing an agenda and providing funding to scientists willing to follow the money.
People aren’t allowed to questioning the science without being considered ‘idiots’ (somewhat similar to those questioning vaccines…). Science should always be open to debate.
Citing extensive data (pdf) to support their case, William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argued that the claims used by the EPA to justify the new regulations aren't based on scientific facts but rather political opinions and speculative models that have consistently proven to be wrong.
“The unscientific method of analysis, relying on consensus, peer review, government opinion, models that do not work, cherry-picking data and omitting voluminous contradictory data, is commonly employed in these studies and by the EPA in the Proposed Rule,” Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen wrote. “None of the studies provides scientific knowledge, and thus none provides any scientific support for the Proposed Rule.
Last I checked agriculture in NZ was powered by solar energy - called photosynthesis?? The many millennia precursor to fossil fuels??
Also the leaf remains many times more efficient than any solar panel so until poor old tech catches up to natures wizardry there’ll be no competition really.
Humanity would have starved long if we could only eat what we ourselves could grow and digest in an arable field. There are alternatives of course
“the energy and materials to create mass cellular agricultural production will be immense and will likely be supported by non-renewable energy and resources. Similar parallels can be drawn to the mass scaling of electric vehicles (Contestabileet al., 2012). Thus, promised environmental benefits are not likely to be realized at first and there remains questions about the energy needed to operate mass cellular agriculture infrastructure.”
Meanwhile we are importing hundreds of thousands of carbon emitters every year, whilst reducing the amount of food available to feed them. Perhaps we should be focused on reducing the human population not cows. Stop paying people on benefits to breed, and stop importing people to drive Ubers and work in pizza shops.
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