When it’s pretending to take the climate crisis seriously, this government likes to call itself Blue Green.
This is expressed in non-bumpersticker language as:
We want to fix this emissions problem but we don’t want to do anything that gets in the way of our friends making money.
If you were ordering this as a pizza, what you would ask for is: the Vegetarian Meat Lovers, please
This week they announced their idea of a methane reduction plan. They called it a pathway that would protect farmers while meeting our climate commitments.
A more honest way to say it would be: we’re going to slow pedal things enough that our farmer friends are comfortable and we’re putting most of our faith in technologies that are yet to properly exist.
What they’re actually promising
If 30% of farmers adopt technologies expected to be available before 2030, total agricultural emissions could reduce by 7-14% over the next decade, with the first technology arriving on farms in 2026 and up to 11 available by 2030.
I love a genius solution. I love green tech. But my love is not unqualified. The stuff has to actually work. Will this?
EcoPond, launched in 2021, treats effluent ponds with iron sulphate and can reduce methane emissions from these ponds by about 99%. Impressive, save for the problem that effluent ponds represent only about 5% of a farm’s total emissions.
Asparagopsis Seaweed, the seaweed supplement that can reduce cattle methane by up to 90% sounds transformative at first blush. But problems yet to be resolved are diverse:
- Potential carcinogenicity
- Potential ozone-depletion effects
- Production costs range wildly from USD $155 to USD $16,640 per tonne depending on location and methods
- Not easy to scale up given the large quantities required
- Potentially reduces average daily weight gain. This, if we pause to consider what farmers tend to look for in their stock, is a bit bloody average mate
The methane vaccine is currently being trialled in Palmerston North, aiming for 20-30% reduction in methane from sheep and cattle lasting about six months, hoping to have it on farms within five years.
Low-methane breeding for bulls is promised for late 2026. But it can take generations for a breeding programme to show results.
Meanwhile, the planet cooks
The Climate Change Commission recommended methane reductions of 35-47% by 2050. They said the government’s Methane Science Review target wasn’t high enough.
A couple of dozen international climate scientists wrote an open letter calling out the government for ignoring scientific evidence and urging methane reductions that contribute to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.
The government listened to Federated Farmers instead.
Might there be concerns other than the planet vexing some farmers more? Might it involve money?
I have had a hunch for a long time. Some MPI reports of recent years suggest this is not misconceived.
The hunch is this: the correction that happened to farming in the ‘80s didn’t stick; that for a while after the harsh shock therapy, New Zealand farms made economic sense. They became lean, efficient operations priced according to what they could actually produce. But then the great kiwi appetite for capital gain got in the way again.
Farms were once again being priced not for yield, but for perpetual capital appreciation. To finance their purchases, farmers borrowed, some heavily.
In 1990, the Reserve Bank reported total farm national debt of $5 billion. By 2017, this had increased to $60.5 billion. That’s a twelve-fold increase. Did the yields on the farms have a twelve fold increase? As far as I can make out, they did not.
A 2020 MPI report said that more than a quarter of New Zealand’s dairy farmers had debt-to-equity ratios of more than 70%, with some having as little as 4% equity in their properties.
By 2022, it’s heartening to then read, industry observers noted that the approach had become more conservative and less speculative. They noted that a degree of speculation had crept into the sector on the basis that farm prices would always increase, and that emphasis had shifted to farming for cash flow and not for capital gain.
Translation: reason is returning but not soon enough to leave a lot of people who bought at the peak in a pretty uncomfortable position.
Now consider the government’s position as it looks at targets and decides whether to listen to scientists or farmers.
Federated Farmers president Wayne Langford claimed the previous 24-47% targets was going to put well over 20 percent of sheep and beef farms out of business, 6 or 7 percent of dairy farms and would literally destroy rural communities.
Might this be because reducing methane is inherently ruinous to farming?
Or might it be rather more because a generation of farmers bought at speculative prices and are now servicing debt loads that leave no room for additional costs?
The government categorically ruled out any tax on agricultural methane emissions. Federated Farmers called this a major step forward and a huge relief for farming families.
But, but, but: a carbon price would create market incentives for farmers to adopt whatever solutions actually emerge. It’s the one policy tool that demonstrably works. But it would also expose the fundamental unsustainability of farms purchased at bubble prices.
So where are we now?
- Weakening climate targets to protect vulnerable farmers
- Betting on technologies that mostly don’t exist or don’t scale
- Refusing to use policy tools that actually work
- Hoping that 30% voluntary adoption of nascent technologies will somehow deliver results that mandatory targets couldn’t
That’s pretty disappointing when we consider that when it cones to methane we really do punch way above our weight in our contribution to temperature increases.
And what should we actually be doing?
Grow the green economy, that’s what!
There are so many damn possibilities. We have a huge starting point with our renewable green energy potential: we have so much that could flow on from it. Why would we not want to grow ourselves a better, cleaner, safer, more diversified, more secure future?
Blue Green future please; hold the Blue.
