New Zealand dairy farmers are some of the most efficient producers of dairy milk in the world, and while the past year has been tough for many industries, the overall picture for dairy has been overwhelmingly positive. Returns to farmers have been at record levels,. along with the economic contribution to NZ.
Dairy export receipts are nudging $20bn a year, up from $4.58m in 2000.
But now the industry is facing its biggest challenge.
Dairy cattle are responsible for 22% of NZ’s emissions. Can NZ meets its methane emission targets without slashing the size of the national dairy herd?
The threat of global warming has become all too plain to New Zealanders in recent weeks and the pressure on the government to act is mounting.
It can’t dodge making decisions on the Climate Change Commission report it received earlier this year. But its proposals could have a severe impact on the dairy industry.
Climate Change Commission chair Rod Carr has warned that if NZ doesn’t pull its weight reducing greenhouse gas, international customers will go elsewhere, costing the economy billions of dollars in the coming years.
“The world will hold countries to account.”
The commission says the cost of transitioning to carbon zero, and a reduction of biogenic methane, is estimated to be a 1.2% reduction in GDP by 2050. Doing nothing would cost 2.3% of GDP.
New Zealand’s dairy industry likes to claim it’s cleaner than overseas counterparts.
“The emissions intensity of our co-operative’s NZ dairy production is about one third of the global average,” Fonterra says.
DairyNZ, the industry body for dairying in New Zealand, argues that NZ is known as a world-leading sustainable, emissions-efficient producer of nutritious dairy milk.
NZ’s meat also has a lower greenhouse gas footprint than other countries.
Dairy industry protagonists mount a variety of arguments against slashing cow numbers. They point out NZ’s total e missions are only 0.16% of the global totals, and while agriculture makes up 48% of those, and the bulk is of methane (49%), this is a relatively short-lived warmer of the atmosphere, unlike carbon.
Against that, a United Nation’s report released in May contended methane is the strongest lever in the world’s toolbox to slow climate change over the next 25 years.
So the odds are the dairy industry may not escape the action the government will have to take on the Climate Change Commission’s recommendation that the national dairy herd will need to be curbed.
In 2015, NZ set methane reduction targets. The goal is that by 2030 biogenic methane emissions should be cut by 10% on 2017 levels. By 2050 the goal is for methane emissions to be 24 to 47% lower than they were in 2017.
Meeting those targets could cost each farm $13,000 a year.
But wait, a solution is on the horizon: scientists are working on a methane vaccine which aims to introduce antibodies into a cow’s saliva which then pass to the animal’s rumen, and bind with the methanogens which convert hydrogen into methane.
This could be a big game changer for animal emissions globally, says the chairman of the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium, Professor Jeremy Hill.
Hill, who is Fonterra’s chief science and technology officer, says research on a methane vaccine has cost between $4m to $5m a year for more than a decade, with Fonterra contributing up to $1m of that.
He reckons it’s promising, “but by no means certain we can do it yet”.
So there are difficult questions for the government as it gets to grips with the Climate Change Commission’s recommendations to cut NZ’s emissions.
Does it insist on curbing herd numbers or does it wait for a scientific solution? Or does it rely on the Climate Change Commission estimate that by 2030 sheep and cattle numbers will fall by around 13.6%, while still maintaining the same level of production, through better farming practices?.
Point of Order 
Other solutions with possibly greater potential include both Seaweed extract and a chemical called 3NOP. Scientific results presented at the NZ Agricultural Climate Change Conference showed 60% reductions in methane from lactating cows with improved feed conversion, for seaweed see https://www.nzagrc.org.nz/assets/1125-Science-update-NZAgCCC_CH4_Lakeman.pdf.
Perhaps we should be focusing on the next steps of the science/approvals processes, not on putting farmers out of business…
LikeLiked by 1 person
The NZ Climate Commission and others conveniently (and wantonly I might add) ignore that fact that the Paris accords state that no country is required to take action in regards to emissions that will affect food supplies. If the plan is to meet the Paris Climate Change obligations the obligation on New Zealand does not include reducing food supplies. ergo, the cows and sheep live to ruminate for a few more days.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The pandemic is clearly far from over and it is likely the world will have ongoing issues for quite some time to come. The initial impact has left NZ with huge Govt debt, very large ongoing deficits, no tourism for the near term, no foreign students leaving our primary producers as a major earner of foreign exchange. Putting the climate global warming debate to one side under the circumstances deferring draconian measures directed towards farmers is the only rational cause of action. Unfortunately, the current Govt is driven purely by ideology and not rationality.
LikeLike
“Climate Change Commission chair Rod Carr has warned that if NZ doesn’t pull its weight reducing greenhouse gas, international customers will go elsewhere, costing the economy billions of dollars in the coming years.”
I wonder what makes the Commissioner fail to understand that the major players in the primary sector have been responding to changing consumer preferences and needs ever since they were established, and need no Government oversight (or control) or incentive to do so. And that’s ignoring the fact that at present there is no alternative supplier with a better emissions profile for their consumers to switch to.
LikeLike