By William Rolleston*
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that human activity, including agriculture, plays a significant role in climate change.
Yet the Green Party’s proposal to tax biological emissions is bad policy for climate change and the economy.
Along with every other New Zealander, farmers already pay for their carbon dioxide emissions in the current Emissions Trading Scheme.
The issue, the Greens’ argue, boils down to biological emissions in the form of methane and nitrous oxide.
Methane is a powerful but short lived greenhouse gas generated by bacteria in the stomach of farm animals.
It lasts around seven years before being converted back to carbon dioxide which is taken up by plants.
The methane cycle is complete when animals eat those plants in turn.
Methane is measured as kilograms of carbon dioxide based on a one hundred year timeframe.
This timeframe has been chosen by international agreement but any period could have been chosen.
Because methane is short lived, but carbon dioxide from fossil fuels cumulative, this choice of timeframe materially affects the calculation of methane in CO2 equivalent units and our perception of it.
Nitrogen enters farms from the atmosphere through nitrogen fixing plants and the application of nitrogen fertilisers. Some of it is lost to the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas, by direct bacterial conversion or through animal wastes naturally breaking down. Nitrous oxide is longer lasting than methane but is also recycled.
Some would argue that the recycling of these gases tends to overstate agriculture’s contribution to climate change.
What is beyond doubt is that the world population continues to grow so does the demand for animal protein.
New Zealand produces less than one percent of the world’s animal protein so even if we stopped farming today, it would have little effect on world prices since our lost production would be replaced by others.
It is here that views on what to do about New Zealand’s biological emissions diverge.
As the Green’s carbon tax proposes to tax dairy, with the door ajar for sheep and beef later, it would make us the only country on earth to emissions tax primary food production.
With no commercially viable tools to reduce farm biological emissions, even the Green’s own report acknowledges ten percent of our dairy farms would be vulnerable, making our dairy industry less competitive.
In order to significantly reduce our total biological emissions we would need to slash production. On current technologies that is only achievable by cutting livestock numbers meaning less income for New Zealand to pay for our roads, hospitals and the things we need from overseas. In 1990, the value of dairy exports was just over $2bn but in the year to April 2014, it was a staggering $15.2bn.
Yet a carbon tax on New Zealand dairy farmers is bad for climate change.
We need cool heads if you excuse the pun.
Panic only leads to poor decision making.
A carbon tax, Dr Norman argues, would encourage the development and implementation of new technologies to improve carbon efficiency through increased productivity.
But such a tax perversely takes money from any industry that is better spent on developing low carbon technologies.
If Dr Norman’s statement is the measure then farmers’ actions prove it is not needed.
In 2011, Rosie the cow produced milksolids with 24 percent fewer emissions than her forebear did in 1990. At a year-on-year improvement of 1.14 percent our dairy farmers have saved around five million tonnes per year of CO2-equivalent emissions by becoming better farmers.
Even the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) believe we have the most carbon efficient dairy farmers on earth.
This is why reducing our production becomes a global emissions own goal since less efficient countries will fill the gap.
Given our carbon efficiency in dairy is almost twice the world average, if we transferred our dairy production overseas, net global emissions would increase by a staggering thirteen million tonnes per year.
Hard as it is to accept, we are doing our bit for global emissions by farming. I suspect there are elements within the Green Party who understand this conundrum, which is why their response to agriculture has been ambivalent.
Furthermore, farmers are investing millions of dollars on research to mitigate agricultural emissions through the Pastoral Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium. In partnership with Government, the aim is to increase feed conversion through reduced methane production while better utilising a valuable farming input – nitrogen.
The UN’s FAO report concluded that improving productivity is the key to reducing the impact of biological emissions on climate change and New Zealand farmers are playing our part.
We are also helping others and later this year, Federated Farmers, the World Farmers Organisation and Government, will host a group of international farmers focussed on carbon efficiency.
Increasing productivity increases carbon efficiency and climate change policies that deny this renders a carbon tax misguided at best. Hard as I look, I cannot find any global or local benefits in a carbon tax on biological emissions from agriculture.
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Dr William Rolleston is the Vice-President of Federated Farmers and this article was originally published in the Dominion Post. It is here with permission.
11 Comments
Opposite actually.
Science is based on how many scientists will back your peer review and how big your reputation is on the scientific stage. Very similar to political maneuvering.
Otherwise postgrads would always get their names on the white papers and articles, rather than professors, managers and supervisors.
(stuff.co.nz published this article a few days ago, so if interest.co.nz want to republish it, I think it is fair game for me to repeat my comment too).
The author is vice-President of Federated Farmers, a body representing our largest, most profitable, and most polluting industry. They are asking for a break, essentially asking other, poorer and less polluting parts of the economy to cover them. Any arguments for that are going to have to be pretty convincing to overcome the obvious charge of self-interest. So, how do they stack up?
"Methane is short-lived": Correct, but misleading. CO2 is a stock pollutant, it's the total amount that matters, methane is a flow pollutant, it's the rate at which it is added to the atmosphere that matters. That rate is increasing. That's why methane is up 150% on pre-industrial levels (CO2 is up 43%). It's a significant component of global warming.
"The methane cycle is complete...": Incorrect. The CO2 is not all reabsorbed by grass, some of it stays in the atmosphere. That's why atmospheric CO2 is increasing. The description as a closed cycle is incorrect.
"The 100 year time frame is arbitrary": Correct, but misleading. We were a party to this international agreement. Are supposed to fly in the face of something we agreed to, just because we don't like it? International agreements are a balance of many things, national self-interest is just one of them. Besides, to get a smaller value of the global warming potential of methane, you have to take a longer time frame. We're having enough trouble planning for a 50 and a 100 year time frame, I think planning for 200-500 years could be a big ask. Finally, the proposed carbon charge already includes a 50% discount for the dairy industry, more than enough to take up any slack in how you calculate the global warming potential of methane.
"The demand for protein is growing". So is the demand for fossil fuels. So what?
"We are too little to make a difference/If we stopped others would step in": This argument has been debunked so many times here and elsewhere. It is completely unconstructive. Should Australia be allowed to successfully argue in international negotiations that their coal would be dug elsewhere if they scaled back? The fallacy is obvious. The special feature of this argument in relation to the dairy industry is that our industry is the most efficient in the world - we should be leaders in this area, not asking for a special break.
"We would need to slash production" - incorrect. The author refutes this when he points out that emissions per litre are already well down. More can be done. Some of this research is paid for by central government, and the benefits go to the dairy industry, because production per hectare rises.
"We're already doing our bit" (eg through the greenhouse gas research centre) - this is like the car industry saying: fuel efficiency is already improving, so please don't make us try any harder. Actually, that argument has succeeded in NZ, but fortunately not in the US or in any other major country.
"The industry earned $15.2b." So what? Oil is a large an important industry to Russia, should it therefore be exempt from all global warming considerations? (Answer - no.) All industries should be treated equally.
Agricultural emissions are an important part of the greenhouse gas picture, in NZ and in other countries. They need to be tackled collectively. We may well decide that we want to reduce fossil fuel emissions more, and agricultural emissions less. Fine. But, note that EU countries are already planning to reduce fossil fuel emissions by 85-100% by 2050, so doing more than this will be pretty tough. Simply asking for a break isn't going to cut it.
" Are supposed to fly in the face of something we agreed to, "
check your "we" at the door pilgrim. Some of us mudfaces, we didn't agree and wouldn't agree. You want to agree on my behalf, then you can buy the farm on your own behalf and start running around in the weather and breakdowns on your own behalf too. When you pay for that Right of Ownership, then and only then, do you get the Right to speak for it.
"The industry earned $15.2b." So what?
Well this country spends more than it earns so there is an economic problem there.
"We would need to slash production" - incorrect.
If Dr Norman stated the purpose of the tax is to "create technology" then this could be quite correct. If technology to reduce doesn't exist the next obvious place is volume reduction.
"The demand for protein is growing". So is the demand for fossil fuels. So what?
Yeah you can only say that if you live in a well fed country where people don't starve to death.
we should be leaders in this area, not asking for a special break.
I think it was stated the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says we *are* leaders in this area. I which case you are inferring leadership isn't good enough.
The thing to look at is not how well you think you are doing, but are we the lowest emissions per cow or per litre world wide. If we are by far the lowest emitter then it is crazy to reduce our output and let bigger polluters take up the slack.
If on the other hand we are not the best then slap the tax on baby!
regards
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