The end of the year is here, for many this is a time where you set your out of office and clock out to the beach for 2 or 3 weeks. For many farmers however this is a busy time of year trying to juggle family needs during the festive season as well as keeping the wheels turning on the farm. I want to personally thank New Zealand farmers for their continued efforts in keeping this country afloat.
This week I revisited two interviews from earlier in the year, I enjoy every interview that I do and these two were no exception. They focus on areas of policy in the farming sector that for me are right up there in terms of the challenges facing New Zealand farmers. Recognition of on-farm sequestration is one and the out-of-control ETS and specifically carbon forests in another. Dr Adam Forbes joined me to discuss sequestration earlier in the year and he spoke sense and talked to science.
I asked him how can we accurately count net emissions on farm if sequestration is not accurately measured? He said" "you would need to understand what's being sequestered on a farm to understand the net position. So I can't really suggest how else that could be done.” So essentially if we can't measure on farm sequestration, then essentially it is impossible to measure or have a net on farm emission value.”
“I think sequestration has to be an actual and transparent thing. We can't be falsifying any aspect of it, and we can't be leaving parts out of that equation either. I think that the best thing we can do is have a complete, accurate sort of accounting of sequestration. And if it means that there's sequestration happening on farms that farmers aren't currently being recognised for, that's obviously a problem right, because we're not going to have a complete picture of that cycle.”
So what is the view of a farmer on some of these issues, farmer Emma Crutchley from Central Otago also joined me.
She has been involved in setting up a large catchment project in the past three or four years and she told me “Over 90,000 plants have been planted and they're all tussocks and grasses, and of course their sequestration values are not included currently, but it does allow the catchment group to bring in some of the woody vegetation around the edges, and then you have got something that actually counts."
“And if that is not there and it doesn't count, then that catchment group actually can’t incentivise those plantings because me as a farmer is going to turn around and say, I don't want to spend money on it, sorry, because I need to plant my pine trees in a big massive square so it can be viable for what I'm trying to do as a farmer. The biggest incentive we have is the fact that carbon farming is worth $86 a ton at the moment, and that completely blows out of water sheep and beef farming, right? So at least if you can start looking at these nature based solutions that fit within HWEN, I mean they're not perfect but they still will work and you've actually got something to work with that doesn’t incentivise you to think of forestry. So I think although they're well meaning (Climate Change Commission) with what they're trying to do I don't think they're quite grasping how these extensive sheep and beef properties actually work.”
And her view on the ETS?
“If we were really economically driven here we would just go out and plant a big square of trees on the farm, but it's not about that, right? In terms wholesale land use change to forestry, effective environmental policy changes behaviour or it drives that practice change in a way that is appropriate for the needs of rural communities. And we all know the history around forestry like forestry has its place it's a really important part of our country, but we've seen what it can do to rural communities and at the moment that economic drive, it's not appropriate for the needs of rural communities, and it's not being recognised.”
These areas will continue to be areas of interest for me in 2023, they are very important, and we need to get them right in order for farmers and the country to prosper.
That’s all from me for 2022, have a wonderful Christmas everyone, oh and if you run into a farmer on your travels, give him or her a high five and tell them they are doing a good job, because they are.
Merry Christmas and catch you next year.
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Angus Kebbell is the Producer at Tailwind Media. You can contact him here.
17 Comments
Hi Angus, have you looked at how different the calculations are to work out our national net emissions liability for the purposes of international agreements and NDCs as CO2 (eq) vs the very different calculations in-country for the likes of He Waka Eke Noa and the ETS?
It's like they're doing math on different planets.
It would be great to have someone explain these for those who don't do that math for their job
I’ve been directly involved with soil fertility for 12 years and I can confirm, without a doubt, that soil can sequester carbon rapidly under a pastural system with good rotational grazing.
The fact that soil carbon sequestration is not being recognised leads me to the conclusion that we are being governed by useful idiots on both sides of the political spectrum.
The question of how much and in what conditions, and applying some formula to that that is applicable for all farming situations across NZ is the rub.
PhD for you to pull that one together
Acedemics might be the problem here not the solution. They helped get us into this mess in the first place.
Common sense isn't common.
Okay, so what cost effective, universally measurable system do you propose that also tells us how much additional carbon has been added post 1990?
The Total Exchange Capacity (TEC) measurement from the Perry Lab Albrecht soil test tells me every twelve months which direction the humifed carbon is heading in. It generally decreases under cropping and increases under dairy pasture. It’s really not that complicated to use, it’s just not excepted by mainstream science. If it didn’t work, I would have moved on to another system years ago.
After 10 years I have enough proof. Dr Albrecht’s work has been around since the 50’s but it's not taught at university.
The academics I follow on this subject see the UNFCCC framework as the abject failure that it is. For years they've been promoting an alternate called, climate pragmatism;
Climate-pragmatism: Innovation, resilience and no regrets
I did a Top 5 for interest.co.nz discussing it back in 2019.
Everything we are doing at the moment is (to my mind) a waste of time. Too complex, too punitive and damaging to our way of life as an island nation and an agrarian economy.
There is a good body of scientific literature around climate pragmatism - I hope that someone points the opposition and minor parties to it, as the current Labour/Greens track is based on the UN approach is detrimental to our future. NZ can use the need to address the changing climate to our advantage, as opposed to our detriment.
Because it is not additional sequester. same with forest existing prior to 1990.
Nope just wrong. I have ten years worth of soil tests on a dairy farm in Putaruru that proves that the Total Exchange Capacity (TEC) can build every year under good managment. That means that the humified carbon is increasing every year along with the soil's ability to store cations and moisture. This isn't even taking into account the extra soil carbon sequestration further down the profile.
Under annually cropped maize the opposite happens unless the maize is rotated around different blocks and allowed to build back up over 3-5 years with pasture and good rotational grazing.
@solardb - in most cases it is additional carbon because the forests aren't mature and are still sequestering.
In any case, native fragments on farmland require expensive active management otherwise they're essentially gone in a couple of decades. So provided the protection and management is carried out it's certainly reducing carbon in the atmosphere compared to doing nothing. And that's not even considering all the biodiversity benefits.
Talk of it being a busy time of the year for farmers....
In southern Hawkes Bay it's ewe shearing time and we've had 9 rain days straight, 13 for the month. Coupled with high humidity = no drying. Shearing ewes is way behind schedule. That brings added risks of fly strike, cast sheep....
No holiday on the farm in this neck of the woods, this Christmas
9 days. Luxury.
Up here in the real Bay we've manage the first 24hr period with no rain this month.
We should be flush with grass, instead with no sunshine we have all this wet green stuff impersonating grass and the cows hate it. This time last year we were getting dry but still getting better production. Even the chicory has struggled and is probably less than 75% of where it should be. Bloody farming.
So we need to accurately figure sequestration to have it count.
But just how accurate are the numbers for emissions, it's not as if we are measuring actual emissions in the paddock in real time.
Yeah, let's ignore the real need to reduce gross emissions, and continue with diversions aimed at keeping business as usual - which has got us into this climate change existential crisis - going.
Climate change being but one symptom of the underlying issue of planetary resource overuse.
And still moan and want more money and stuff. Will a political party be brave enough to present a solution to the electorate, or will it be who can offer the biggest lolly scramble?
The Industry was excluded from ETS and consulted. But its looks like dairy and fossil fuel have thrown hill farmers under the bus, both industry's can afford the offset of carbon farming. They just need the land from hill farmers.
Except of course there is no offsetting methane in that way so dairy isn't acting that way. By fossil fuel I assume you mean the average Joe and Jill who are the consumers of FF and need to buy carbon credits to offset their emissions?
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