FAO Report

Post written by C. Will

New Zealand (NZ) has relatively low emissions per unit of dairy production. So can NZ farmers share the skills and technologies that allow such low emissions to help lower global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions?

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) released a report in 2010 that looked into GHG emissions from the global dairy sector. Although the report is from 2010, it has some interesting findings worth discussing. In particular, a comparison of GHG emissions per kg of Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM) across different regions (see graph below).

Source: Gerber, P., Vellinga, T., Opio, C., Henderson, B., & Steinfeld, H. (2010). Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Dairy Sector, A Life Cycle Assessment. FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Animal Production and Health Division, Rome. Page 34.

FPCM is a way of comparing milk produced from different dairy animals on a common basis by equating the level of fat and protein in the milk. The graph highlights where milk production is the most GHG emissions intensive and therefore the least efficient. There is a clear trend showing developing regions (Africa and Asia) having higher emissions than more industrialized regions (Europe and North America). 

We have been told that NZ emissions are even lower than the rest of Oceania; approximately 0.9 per kg of FPCM. This gives an idea how efficient NZ farming is and supports a comment in a previous blog that touched on the difference in efficiency between NZ farmers and farming in Africa. 

Livestock: The answer, not the problem?

Post written by C. Will

Seth Itzkan of Planet-TECH discusses how holistic management can restore grass lands and reverse the effects of climate change in his TEDx talk; “How global warming can be mitigated through holistic management”.

In the video, Seth discusses his experiences in Zimbabwe and how the village herders have changed the way they manage their livestock. Using holistic management, they have replenished grasslands and during the dry season surface water is occurring further upstream than before. Increased availability of surface water has made farming easier and removed the need for water pumps, saving money. Regenerating grasslands also increases soil sequestration, reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Holistic management uses livestock in a way that mimics wild herds which were a key component in the ecosystem when grasslands thrived. The wild herds would graze, naturally process the grass, fertilise the ground and then move onto a new area. The villagers are now replicating this process by running livestock in dense packs and moving them regularly just as a wild herd would. They also stick to grazing plans to prevent over grazing.         

Although his focus is on environments that have suffered desertification (the transformation of habitable land to desert), parallels can be made between the framework of holistic management and the way farmers in New Zealand manage their stock. Relative to farmers in Africa though, New Zealand farmers have lower emissions per unit of production and are more efficient. However, even in New Zealand many farmers can apply management strategies other farmers are already using to reduce their environmental impact. A recent Motu working paper, looks at such mitigation possibilities.

Holistic management was a way of managing resources originally developed by Allan Savory. Here Allan offers further discussion on holistic management and “how to fight desertification and reverse climate change”.

New Motu Working Paper Shows Significant Potential for Better Farm Management Practices to Improve Environmental Outcomes

Post written by H. Griffin.

This new working paper looks at differences in management practices of New Zealand dairy farms and the mitigation of nitrogen leaching and greenhouse gas emissions. Research on this topic in New Zealand to date has relied on simulation modelling and has been limited by the fact that different farms have generally been treated as homogenous. In reality, farms vary greatly – looking at this heterogeneity gives a better idea of the potential for better environmental outcomes through more efficient farm management practices.

Using data on 264 New Zealand dairy farms, the paper estimates the extent to which farm management and farmer skill could potentially reduce farms’ greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen leaching per unit of production. It suggests that significant feasible, relatively low-cost mitigation could be effected by less efficient farmers moving towards existing best practice, potentially reducing nitrogen leaching by more than 30 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by more than 15 percent. The potential for such mitigation varies considerably across farms.

Check out the new paper here.

Special Event - Feeding the World without Consuming the Planet

Make sure to catch this event via livestream on the 6th November 8am NZDT.

Reframing the Policy Approach: Lessons from Niki Harré

Post written by H. Griffin.

Niki Harré’s Psychology for a Better World explores how we can create a society in which governments, organisations and individuals take pride in their efforts to protect the planet and each other. In the video below, Harré summarises the key messages of her book.

In a previous post, we looked at how individual environmental action can be motivated. Harré’s work is not only relevant to individuals, but also to policy-makers. The design and implementation of policy can have a huge impact on its effectiveness. Harré highlights the importance of positivity in encouraging creativity and cooperation. Positive emotions also play a vital role in facilitating behavioural change.

Framing the way agricultural greenhouse gas emissions are addressed in a more positive manner could be very beneficial. Approximately half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions relate to agriculture. The mitigation of these emissions is particularly challenging because current mitigation options are mostly associated with farm management practices and must be implemented by tens of thousands of farmers. There are currently no ‘silver bullet’ technologies that can be imposed or implemented by agricultural processing/distribution companies on behalf of farmers. Furthermore, incorporating agriculture into the ETS – which has been the focus of public debate – risks generating large wealth transfers. Because of this, it is crucial that communication of the issue is productive in facilitating positive action.
 

Political debate on the issue so far has been polarised, negative and unproductive. Harré shows us that reframing the policy conversation could potentially better equip New Zealand’s agricultural sector to face the challenges ahead.

As explored in this Motu note, New Zealand can play an important role in global climate change mitigation efforts as a policy leader. Positively reframing our policy debate domestically is an important step in enabling New Zealand to play this role.

 Instead of tales of terror, we need to be telling tales of joy. We also need to be designing policy that facilitates the acknowledgement of positive behaviour of farmers. Harré suggests that making positive behaviour more visible to other farmers could have multiplying effects as people tend to copy each other.

100% Perception: DCDs and our International Image

Post written by Hannah Griffin


The recent food safety controversies involving Fonterra have highlighted the critically important interdependence between NZ’s exporters and our international brand. Further controversy surrounding DCD traces followed by a botulism scare were linked with river water quality in a wide ranging attack by the UK’s Daily Mail, alleging our ‘100% Pure’ slogan was “pure manure”. Whilst some have claimed the 100% Pure line should be taken with a grain of salt, export bans put in place by unaffected countries demonstrates the serious consequences of mishandled communications.

In the past month, bans and suspensions of Fonterra’s products have variously occurred in Russia, Sri Lanka and most recently Bangladesh. Particularly unsettling is Sri Lanka’s focus on DCD residues and Bangladesh’s related “nitrate in the milk powder” concerns.

Regardless of the (disputed) extent to which DCD residues have been detected, it is absolutely essential that we effectively communicate with our trading partners to avoid our brand being unnecessarily tarnished. Although DCD is non-toxic and presents no food-safety risk, many international markets have little to no tolerance of any level of chemical residue in their food - there is no international standard prescribing an acceptable level of DCD.

But why are we using DCD in the first place? DCD (technically ‘Dicyandiamide’) is one of the most promising technologies available for reducing the environmental impact of agriculture - it is the only product recognised under New Zealand’s National Agriculture Greenhouse Gas Inventory as a mitigation tool. This, and its additional effect of reducing the level of Nitrate leaching into our waterways, makes its usage very compelling, from an environmental perspective.

Approximately half of NZ’s emissions relate to agriculture and of these, 20% are related to livestock emissions from nitrous oxide and a further 6% from Nitrogen-heavy fertilisers. Motu and Landcare Research studies have shown that regulating nutrient run-off in water catchments or GHG emissions will generally lead to improvements in both; this is largely driven by changes in land use but also on-farm management decisions. Other, pre-experimental modelling under the Pastoral 21 programme has suggested it may be technically feasible to enact a 30% reduction in N leaching using current technologies even with a 20% increase in production. This suggests that significant nitrous oxide reductions may also be possible.

But do the economics stack up? Since agriculture is not included in the emissions trading scheme, farmers cannot use DCD to directly benefit from the reduction in CO2-e emissions. Positively though, DCD usage can in some circumstances boost pasture production by 5-10% but most studies suggest that its use will still come at a cost to profitability. DairyNZ work suggests that 20% reductions in leaching may be possible on dairy farms in Canterbury, while maintaining farm profitability.

Technological advances in agriculture represent a huge opportunity to increase the sustainability of our farming systems, without compromising food safety. It is essential that we pre-emptively address the potential concerns of our trade partners so as to enhance, rather than jeopardise our clean, green reputation.

Concerns and capabilities lead to action

The AgDialogue process Motu recently ran was designed to create a dialogue amongst agriculture sectoral groups, government, academics and individual farmers around dealing with New Zealand’s agricultural GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions. One of the outcomes of this discussion was the creation of a matrix to describe how we can get action on wicked problems such as lowering agricultural GHG emissions: who can act and what can they do.

In this short video, Suzi Kerr explains the thinking behind the matrix.
 

Below is the matrix. Rather than being a large computer programme set up to create an alternate reality, the AgDialogue matrix is really a simple way of visualising what Suzi explains in the video.

Basically, an action intended to help reduce our agricultural GHGs can fit into one or more of the boxes in the matrix. The ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) for example, would fit into the top right box, as a national level regulation designed to incentivise emission reductions. The Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Center would fit in the top-middle box.

However, as Suzi points out in the video, we need adequate concern and capabilities as well as regulations to reward good and penalise poor behaviour. By using the AgDialogue matrix, we can identify who could undertake actions, and what these actions could aim to achieve. When we have populated it with a set of existing actions, if there are any gaps, we can come up with creative ways of filling in these gaps – as we did through AgDialogue.

A piece of research, done by Taciano Milfont at Victoria University of Wellington backs up the thinking behind the matrix. Importantly, his research was carried out in New Zealand – something that is very valuable as we often have to rely on research coming from larger countries, and apply their findings here.

Using data from a one year study, Taciano concludes: “Knowing more about global warming and climate change increases overall concern about the risks of these issues, and this increased concern leads to greater perceived efficacy and responsibility to help solving them.”

Taciano’s research paper can be found online for free here.

A special thanks to former Motu Research Analyst Zach Dorner for drafting this post.

Agricultural Emissions Teaching Materials Released

Last month, we released a brand new short film on agricultural emissions. Today, we are pleased to announce the release of a set of free teaching materials to accompany the film. These consist of an editable presentation, complete with speaking notes, and further information on some of the figures that the presentation contains.

Our intention is that a wide range of people – including teachers, lecturers, farmers or people working with farmers – will be able to use the film and presentation to lead a discussion on what we can do about agricultural emissions. Potential audiences include secondary and tertiary students, as well as consumers and farmers. In other words, anyone who eats!

The materials can be downloaded by following the links below. In addition, we have just released the film in physical copy. If you would like to be posted a free DVD which includes the film and materials, please send your name and address to info@motu.org.nz.

We will be happy to support those who wish to use the film and materials by answering specific questions. We'll collate the questions and answers into an FAQ document which will be available soon on the blog and also on the Motu website. If you have any questions at all, please email them through.

The New Zealand Farming Story presentation (.pdf version)
The New Zealand Farming Story presentation (editable Powerpoint)
The New Zealand Farming Story speaking notes
Notes on figures for emissions from meat consumption in presentation

The New Zealand Farming Story: Tackling Agricultural Emissions

Today we are very excited to release our new short film on New Zealand’s agricultural emissions. Although the topic may sound dry (though hopefully not too dry if you visit this blog!) our filmmaker Jess Feast has done an excellent job of making an engaging film on an extremely important topic for the future of our country, our planet, our people and our stomachs. (She also made our films about improving the water quality in Lake Rotorua).

The film covers a wide range of topics, and many of the ideas in it come directly from what we learnt through the AgDialogue process. Importantly, we cover how we might be able to achieve some real reductions in New Zealand’s agricultural GHGs (greenhouse gases). You will get to meet some of the participants and experts from AgDialogue, including two of our star farmers, Mike and Megan.

The film speaks for itself, so you are better off watching it than reading about it. But before you do that, I’d just like to acknowledge all the hard work that went into making the film. To all those in the AgDialogue who gave their time and those who have done related research in the past few years, this film is dedicated to you and the hard work you have done.  Also thank you to our filmmaker Jess and the Ministry for Primary Industries for its support. The work will pay off in creating a more sustainable and prosperous future for us and future generations.

Oh, and if you like the film, please share it far and wide. New Zealand is uniquely placed to be able to make a big difference to levels of agricultural GHGs (greenhouse gases) around the world. And everyone in this country can make a difference.

UPDATE: Teaching materials to accompany the film have now also been released. These can be found here.

Looking forward: what NZ rural land might look like in the coming decades under a carbon price

This blog post is by Motu Research Analyst Zack Dorner.

A couple of years ago, my sister brought her partner to visit New Zealand for the first time. We picked them up in Auckland, and drove down the North Island back to Wellington. He asked “Why are there so many golf courses here?”

Of course, they weren’t golf courses, but the lush, green grassy farmland that New Zealand is so well known for, and that he was not used to.

Motu has just released a new working paper, modelling what our rural land might look like in the coming decades, including with a price on agricultural GHGs (greenhouse gases). Luckily, for our “golf courses”, even with the agricultural sector facing a price on its GHGs, New Zealand probably won’t look much different to the way it does now.

The really cool thing about the model used is that it is based on real world observations of how rural land use in New Zealand has changed in recent decades in response to commodity prices. It is slow to adjust – farmers don’t want to switch immediately to the new best thing for their land (see final graph below), which is understandable. Changing your whole farm can’t be easy or cheap to do, and who’s to say market conditions won’t change again.

Of course, the results in the working paper are just from a model. They do not predict the future, but give us an idea about the types of changes to land use and their magnitude under certain scenarios. There are on-farm mitigation options that farmers may be able to do to reduce their GHGs before changing land use, but to keep things simple, the model does not include these.

The working paper models three scenarios out to 2030: no carbon price, a carbon price ($25) just for forestry, and a greenhouse gas price for forestry and agricultural emissions.

The model shows several interesting things.

First, as I have said, land use change is quite slow. Even with a $25 carbon price on forestry and agriculture, there is actually relatively minimal changes in land use. This provides evidence that our agricultural sector may be able to respond efficiently to a price on carbon without huge disruption to rural life in New Zealand.

However, although changes to land use are gradual and small, they actually make a big difference to our emissions. The extra trees are especially helpful in this regard. From the paper directly:

Under our ETS [emissions trading scheme] scenarios there is substantial reforestation. The extra removals associated with this new planting mean that the additional sequestration in 2024 is from 17.6 to 20 percent of national inventory agricultural emissions in 2008.

That’s a huge amount of emissions, and would help New Zealand immensely in our quest to lower our emissions.

In terms of cows and sheep, we actually see more dairy cows, and fewer sheep and beef farms. This is because dairy farms are so much more profitable, and the balance is tipped even more in their favour once a price is applied to farming emissions. This is already happening to a much larger extent, and only the already marginal sheep and beef farms are converted to dairy or forestry under an efficient response to a carbon price. The overall change is only minor in the scheme of things, and even when you exclude agricultural emissions from a carbon price, this still happens (see the first graph below).

So these results suggest that there are large benefits to having a $25 carbon price in New Zealand for forestry and our country’s emissions profile. As for agricultural emissions, if dairy and sheep and beef farmers face a price on their emissions, the sky won’t fall in, but the adjustments that are already taking place will just continue to a greater extent. By creating an efficient, economy-wide price signal which includes agriculture, we should achieve more mitigation overall (see the second graph below). If on farm mitigation is encouraged optimally, and technologies continue to improve, we might well see less of the minor reduction in farming in the model and instead end up with more efficient farms on our rural land.

Bringing agricultural emissions into the ETS or some other pricing mechanism must occur once farmers are ready and on board. Through research like this, and having a dialogue with all interested parties, we can hopefully move forward together, and work towards future-proofing our golf courses, and our farms.

And now, for those of you who get a kick out of graphs (like me), here are some relevant ones:

This graph above shows the projected change in land use share for each type of land use. The solid lines give baseline projections. Short-dash-dot lines give a $25 carbon price, but not on agriculture. Dashed lines show a carbon price with agriculture. Note the y axis is the same scale for each graph so direct comparisons can be made (page 9).

This graph shows the amount of emissions that are reduced or sequestered. The red line is with just forestry, the blue line shows including agricultural emissions as well increases the emission reductions (page 16).

  

This final graph below shows why sheep and beef farms have been declining over the years, and how land use change is gradual (page 4 of Kerr and Olssen 2012).

Biological Farming and soil carbon – green wash or climate saviour?

This blog post is by Motu Research Analyst Zack Dorner.

Earlier this year, AgDialogue participant Rick Braddock sent us through this article, written Clayton Wallwork from the Carbon Farming Group, about Biological Farming. Rick Braddock is Operations Director of Farming New Zealand, an agricultural investment fund established to aggregate large pastoral farms under a New Zealand ownership model, as well as a trustee of the Carbon Farming Group.

Biological Farming is a farming practice that is still being developed and aims to use natural rather than synthetic fertilisers. We at Motu decided to ask some soil scientists about the potential for Biological Farming to store soil carbon, as a way of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

As noted in the Carbon Farming Group article, evidence to date around Biological Farming is largely anecdotal, and each farm has different Biological Farming techniques applied to it, based on its unique circumstances.

Troy Baisden from GNS Science told us about what may cause changes in soil carbon in traditional intensive farming system, and how this might differ under a Biological Farming system. Biological Farming systems may be less prone to losing soil carbon compared with traditional intensive systems, but Troy emphasises there is no clear evidence Biological Farming will gain soil carbon. Therefore more research is needed before it can claim to be a reliable way of helping to address climate change.

Troy explained to us that it is almost impossible to store carbon in soil without nitrogen, typically at a ratio of around ten carbon particles to one nitrogen particle. Therefore, understanding the amount of nitrogen being stored in the soil is important for understanding how much carbon is stored in the soil (see image below).

This image was pulled from this useful article in NZ Science Teacher magazine

With intensive farming, by trying to push more nitrogen through the system (by using more nitrogen fertiliser or importing more feed to produce more product), farm nitrogen budgets show that despite increasing nitrogen inputs, many farms lose more nitrogen than they gain. Counter intuitively, it seems that cycling more nitrogen faster and faster through the soil might eventually start to cause the overall level of nitrogen and carbon in the soil to drop. 

Troy says “We’ve been surprised at the level of losses that seem to be occurring, and at the observation that large N [nitrogen] losses seem to be taking carbon out of the soil as well.” Unfortunately it remains difficult to understand why these losses are occurring and work out the exact numbers without long-term experiments that run for decades. The one long term study to date provides some evidence that almost three quarters of a tonne of carbon per hectare per year are lost on traditional intensive dairy farms (Schipper et al. 2010).

In terms of Biological Farming, Troy says:

...the main argument [is] that you’re trying to work with a system that regulates itself better. So it will simply tell you “no” when you try and push it too hard. ... That’s the magic of it. ... One of the reasons why you can’t [push the system] is you’re not going to add bag nitrogen fertiliser.

By relying on natural nitrogen fixation, such as through clover in the soil, the soil is prevented from becoming saturated with nitrogen to the point where it loses more than it is gaining, and the total level of nitrogen in the soil starts to drop. The natural nitrogen fixers shut down when the system is being run too hard, though of course this will also place a limit on the total output of the farm. Though this might mean a Biological Farming system isn’t losing soil carbon, it’s unclear whether Biological Farms actually gain soil carbon.

There is very limited evidence that organic farming systems (which are similar to Biological Farming systems) limit nitrogen losses much better than a conventional farming system, but we still don’t understand fully why that might be (and Troy is not aware of this evidence having been published).

So, Biological Farming could be better at managing stores of carbon if it is better at managing stores of nitrogen. But the jury is still out.

Jacqueline Rowarth, Professor of Agribusiness at Waikato University who holds a PhD in soil science, is even less positive about Biological Farming. It’s a very complicated picture, as carbon has many ways into and out of the soil within a farm system. For example, Jacqueline points out that drought could be the major cause of loss in soil carbon in the Schipper et al. (2010) study, given the study’s period and the effects of drought during that time.

There are a number of ways in which carbon will find its way onto and off of a farm. Like any plant, the grass will naturally remove carbon from the atmosphere and use it to form its structure as it grows, including its roots in the soil. On a dairy farm carbon is regularly being exported in milk tankers, having been removed from the soil and grass through grazing, and turned into part of the milk by livestock, rather than being put directly into the atmosphere (this also applies to nitrogen). Less carbon will be exported less regularly from a sheep and beef farm, through removal and slaughter of animals.

Carbon is also being added through any inputs brought into the farm, including extra feed such as palm kernel (though of course this may have climate impacts elsewhere). Fertilisers such as urea will only add nitrogen directly to the soil, and not carbon.

Another dimension within a farming system is level of grazing. The growth of grass on soil can have a bearing on the amount of carbon in the soil. More grass on the surface supports more litter in the soil, which increases soil carbon. Also, different types of grasses will support different levels of carbon being stored in the plants and soil.

With lower levels of production from Biological Farming, and little evidence to support the claims around it, Jacqueline says that proponents of Biological Farming, though well meaning, may be heading down the wrong track. Strong scientific backing is vital to informing decisions around farming systems and environmental impacts.

With all the mysteries surrounding soil carbon, we are a long way off measuring and rewarding those storing carbon in their soil (see this Parsons and Rowarth 2009 article on measuring soil carbon under Kyoto on pages 2, 5 and 6). So, if you wanted to start Biological Farming only to store carbon in your soil, then perhaps you should wait for more evidence. And you need to be careful who you decide to listen to. Though Jacqueline is sceptical, Troy Baisden thinks that there’s a reasonable chance that Biological Farming doesn’t lose soil carbon, even if we may not be sure whether it would gain soil carbon.

In terms of switching from an intensive farming system to a biological farming system then, it’s a big risk to do it just to store more carbon in your soil. To decide to become a Biological Farmer, you would have to be convinced by some the other arguments outlined in the Carbon Farming’s document, attached to this post. No doubt, as evidence starts to accumulate, the debate on Biological Farming will continue for some time.

Many thanks to Rick Braddock, Troy Baisden, Jacqueline Rowarth and Louis Schipper for their help in putting this post together.

Reference

Schipper, L.A.; Parfitt, R.L.; Ross, C.; Baisden, W.T; Claydon, J.J.; Fraser, S. (2010) Gains and losses in C and N stocks of New Zealand pasture soils depend on land use. Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment. 139: 611–617. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2010.10.005.

Further reading

Parsons, A.J.; Rowarth, J.S., Newton, P.C.D. (2009) Managing pasture for animals and soil carbon. Proceedings of the New Zealand Grassland Association. 71: 77-84.

Thorrold, Bruce (May 2012) The Biological Farming Debate. Grassland News. New Zealand Grassland Association. 2-3.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7397/full/nature11069.html