By Wayne Langford, Federated Farmers national president
Federated Farmers secured another major advocacy win last week, with the Government announcing an independent review of our national methane reduction target.
This review is a really positive step forward for farmers, rural communities and the New Zealand economy – but it hasn’t just fallen into our lap or happened by chance.
It’s taken a lot of hard work and sustained pressure over a number of years to ensure our politicians and policymakers properly understand methane’s different warming impact.
Our current methane reduction target of 24-47% has been deeply unpopular with farmers since introduced in 2019 because we all knew it wasn’t realistic, affordable or fair.
It also went much further than what was needed to stop farmers contributing to further warming, despite the huge costs this would put on farmers, rural communities and our national economy.
Those numbers weren’t specific to New Zealand. They were plucked from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and applied out of context, even when the report said they shouldn’t be used for that purpose.
The Government of the day knew the targets were driven by political convenience rather than scientific evidence, but happily threw farmers under the bus and portrayed us as the villain anyway.
That’s why Federated Farmers are proud to say we we’ve opposed these targets from day one.
It’s also why we’ve pushed so hard for this independent review and made it one of our 12 policy priorities for restoring farmer confidence during the election.
Last year Federated Farmers joined forces with DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb NZ to commission a report that measured the warming impact of New Zealand’s current methane targets.
The study was carried out by the universities of Oxford and Cranfield and led by an internationally respected and highly credible climate scientist, Professor Myles Allen.
Allen is a Professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Net Zero Initiative, and has been described by the BBC as ‘the physicist behind net zero’.
The report found the current targets could see methane reductions offset all of the expected additional warming from carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide from the entire New Zealand economy.
If other countries meet their existing emissions reduction commitments, then a 15% reduction in methane would see New Zealand methane contribute no additional warming from 2020 levels.
It was also noted that if countries significantly increased their current levels of ambition, a reduction of up to 27% may be required.
This is significantly lower than the current methane reduction range of 24-47% and demonstrates the importance of taking a warming-centred approach to emissions reduction.
We can’t lose sight of what we’re trying to achieve here: we’re trying to prevent further warming. That’s why the Paris Agreement set a temperature target of limiting warming to below 2 degrees.
Reducing emissions is how we prevent warming, but it’s important to remember not all emissions have the same warming impact. Methane behaves very differently in the atmosphere than CO2.
We need to be taking a scientific approach to target setting that considers those different warming impacts when setting our climate policy.
For too long farmers have been told we’re responsible for half of New Zealand’s emissions, but looking at emissions alone simply doesn’t paint an accurate picture.
Kiwi farmers already lead the world when it comes to producing low-carbon meat and milk. We’ve made huge progress and our methane emissions have been stable or declining for over a decade.
This means we don’t have a hell of a lot of low-hanging fruit left to help us reduce our emissions without new technologies.
Without those new technologies, the only way to achieve large reductions would be through having less cows, sheep and food production in New Zealand.
That would be devastating for our economy and rural communities, with our food and fibre sector accounting for 82% of our country’s total exports.
Other parts of the economy are being asked to reach net zero and stop their contribution to further warming by 2050, but currently farmers are being asked to go much further.
It’s important this review is given a clear objective of aligning methane targets with what would be required to stop farmers’ contribution to further warming.
This isn’t about letting farmers off the hook; it’s about making sure we aren’t being asked to do more than our fair share of the heavy lifting or bear a disproportionate amount of the cost.
Federated Farmers, New Zealand’s leading independent rural advocacy organisation, has established a news and insights partnership with AgriHQ, the country’s leading rural publisher, to give the farmers of New Zealand a more informed, united and stronger voice. Feds news and commentary appears each week in its own section of the Farmers Weekly print edition and online.
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