Opinion
There is a lot being said currently about the environment, meeting emissions targets, RMA reforms, fresh water regulations and on they go.
I talk a lot about (through the influence of no one I might add), about pine trees, on farm sequestration and it’s recognition in full, I do this because for me it’s about ensuring two parts of an equation are present and calculated, which in the case of sequestration is about finding a net emission profile on farm, and I look at all these things through a lens of the farmer with a long term view of a sustainable industry.
I do this because I value the primary industry as this country’s most important asset and I am proud of our nation's farming and export trading history. And I believe it will continue to drive this nation's export earnings for many decades to come.
In the year to June 2022 this country's Primary industry provided the following revenue to New Zealand’s economy:
- Dairy export revenue increased 15% to $22 billion in the year to 30 June 2022. This increase was driven by reduced supply from key dairy exporting regions and firm demand from dairy importing nations.
- For the year to 30 June 2023, dairy exports are forecast to increase 6% to $23.3 billion. This is due to a weak New Zealand dollar, the previous season's inventories being sold in the current year and reduced supply from key dairy exporting regions.
- Meat and wool export revenue increased 18% to reach $12.3 billion in the year to 30 June 2022, due to tight supply, demand rebounding, and higher prices.
- Meat and wool export revenue for the year to 30 June 2023 is forecast to increase by 1% to $12.4 billion due to higher production, despite weaker demand placing downwards pressure on prices.
- Forestry export revenue increased 1% to $6.6 billion in the year to 30 June 2022, driven by record high pulp prices offsetting a drop in demand for logs.
- For the year to 30 June 2023, forestry export revenue is expected to remain flat at $6.6 billion, as a weak New Zealand dollar offsets reduced demand.
- Horticulture export revenue increased 3% to $6.8 billion in the year to 30 June 2022, driven by larger kiwifruit export volumes and higher export prices for wine.
- Export revenue is forecast to increase 5% to $7.1 billion in the year to 30 June 2023.
- Seafood export revenue increased 8% to $1.9 billion in the year to 30 June 2022, driven by high export volumes with the return of tourism and growth in food service.
- Seafood export revenue is expected to increase 4% to $2 billion for the year to 30 June 2023.
- Arable export revenue decreased 3% to $252 million in the year to 30 June 2022, driven by lower export volumes on the back of a difficult harvest from unfavourable weather conditions.
- For the year to 30 June 2023, arable export revenue is expected to increase by 5% to $265 million. This is mostly due to higher vegetable seed prices, which reflects rising production costs.
- Export revenue from processed food and other products increased 4% to $3.2 billion in the year to 30 June 2022, led by a 15% increase in the category 'other products'.
- For the year to 30 June 2023, processed food and other products are expected to increase by 3% to $3.3 billion.
- $53 bln in total export revenue (14% of GDP) and close to 400,000 jobs (14% of the employed labour force).
With a GDP of $380 bln and a population of just over 5 million it’s not hard to see how important the Primary industry is to this country.
I am going to mention trees again and in particular Carbon Farming, I get hundreds of emails and messages every week about carbon farming, most see a long term problem with carbon farming and I get a few that think it’s marvellous and who use choice language in their support of carbon farming.
But if we lose food producing country to carbon farming we are in my view shooting ourselves in the foot, we will see a significant drop in not only food production and revenue generated for this country, but hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost and our rural communities will be decimated.
Rural landscapes will change for the worse, biodiversity will be lost, and a sea of monoculture will prevail.
If we are chasing emission reduction targets then why are we allowing 100% of offsetting? Does this drive innovation or drive change in large emitters output?
The answer is no. It undermines the integrity of New Zealand’s biggest earner and a sector that employs 400,000 people by essentially dumping pollution onto farmland, that provides no significant benefit to the country in real terms.
We need to decide what our future looks like and we need to decide if it’s a band-aid solution through carbon farming, or shoring up our future through further improved efficiencies in our current farming systems and improving farmgate returns by further developing our international markets.
We are the most efficient farmers in the world, farmers need recognition and increased returns for what is grown in this country. It’s time for the Government to get in behind the earners of New Zealand rather than continued efforts to make the job harder.
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Angus Kebbell is the Producer at Tailwind Media. You can contact him here.
9 Comments
Angus - it’s all about profit - forget productive you can produce lots of meat and wool and still go broke. Look at the decline in sheep and farm numbers from 1990. It’s a steady and constant decline - Why?
Find the answer to that and your wish will be granted but protecting a industry is circling the wagons for a last stand I’m afraid and won’t stop the decline.
Trees are the least of your problems and a red herring avoiding the real issues.
Why have sheep numbers declined? We don't need as many sheep to do the same job. Lambing percentages are much higher and genetics much better. Have read of some of the agricultural literature or talk to some farmers. 600,000 tonnes of red meat off 70 million vs 450,000 tonnes off 25 million sheep. You fail to see the reason we had 70+ million sheep was because of dumb arsed subsidy programs and now you support a dumb arsed "carbon" subsidy program. Though at least Muldoon dumb arsed program actually produced some export receipts - unlike carbon bludging which is just a cost to the economy and artificially jacks up farmland prices beyond economic return for farming. Carbon is great for bludgers but like all boondoggles at the expense of working kiwis.
Farmers could use carbon credit earning trees to increase their meat production, poplars for summer, tree Lucerne or similar for winter fodder.tree Lucerne might be borderline,it will reach 5 metres, but not much of a crown. There are other winter fodder trees pin Oak etc
How are we to take the author seriously when he writes things like this:
'Rural landscapes will change for the worse, biodiversity will be lost, and a sea of monoculture will prevail'
Honestly. So the existing pasture grass monoculture that supports dairy etc is somehow a good thing? Plastered every year with chemicals which then pour into our waterways, and irrigated in many cases with fossil water that is being used faster than it can be replaced?
Even the poorest 'monoculture' pine plantation (and no I'm not hugely in favour of this to do our carbon farming with) offers significantly more ecologically than the typical chemically blasted dairy pasture (see Pawson, S. M., Ecroyd, C. E., Seaton, R., Shaw, W. B., & Brockerhoff, E. G. (2010). New Zealand's exotic plantation forests as habitats for threatened indigenous species. New Zealand Journal of Ecology, 342-355).
You conveniently overlook the fact that the products of those farming systems provide you with the nourishment that sustains your living, breathing and economic existence.
In your daily life you are generating pollutants and ghg emissions, either directly or indirectly through your your consumer practices. Some examples, I assume you change the tyres on your car when worn - where does that worn off rubber go? If you wear synthetic mix fabrics, where do the microplastic particles from each laundry cycle go? Into our waterways or oceans.
Thanks Angus. A farmer said to me today......
"Ask a retailer to leave 10% of their stock on the shelf. Do not sell it, replace it when the product use by date is expired. Just leave it there, untouchable. Keep this up in perpetuity, just leave it there and look at it. That's what I'm being required to do as a farmer in taking land out of production to improve the environmental performance of my farm."
I'm surveying farmers in our local river catchment to quantify the impacts arising from Cyclone Gabrielle both in terms of whole farm enterprise impact and riparian retirement impact. It is huge on both counts. One farmer yesterday, 640 hectares, recounted losing 95% of the native plantings and 7km of fencing they undertook over the last 2 years - on that farm, that's a $30,000+ loss - just in riparian protection. There's another 2km of access tracks, 0.3km of stock water pipeline, 1 submersible pump, 1.5km of subdivision fencing, and 9 culverts lost. And that is not the hardest hit farm.
At least, in most cases, the retailer will not lose that stock due to a climate event.
What's my point? There is too much being demanded of farmers for the wider national (global) benefit at farmer cost and those remote from those reap the benefit and don't contribute to the ghg emissions reduction, or pollution of waterways in their urban environments. That has to change.
That farmer would receive carbon credits for the trees on the land retired, so an invalid comparison.
There seems to be alot of misinformation been repeated, it's always someone told someone ,rarely from the horses mouth.hell, I had about 5 people tell me their mates grandson in the air force saw bodies floating all over tarawhiti, and we know how true that turned out to be . And yes, I passed it on , silly me
I have no farming connections and i am well aware of its contributions to our total emissions, but those who are hell-bent on emasculating our biggest export earner are in my view, being dishonest.
I never see any acknowledgement of the economic effect of what they propose and for what? If we somehow eliminated ALL our agricultural methane emissions( some 70% of total agricultural emissions, that would save no more than some 30million tonnes of emissions. You might think that's a big figure, but it's a drop in the ocean, with total global emissions of CO2e last year of some 58 gigatons(that's 58billion tonnes).
Nothing we do here in NZ can move the global dial-our emissions are utterly insignificant and while our farming industry-far from perfect as it is- tries hard to reduce its emissions through technology, what is happening at a global scale. How about all the new coal mines in China and India? The new oil coming from Guyana, the just announced Willow oil field in Alaska which is estimated to emit some 250 million tonnes over its 30 year lifespan? Global emissions are still rising while we re quite prepared to hobble our biggest industry. How nuts is that?
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