Farming within environmental limits

Here is a copy of a brief article by Dr Dan Marsh, which was recently published in the new magazine Primary. It discusses the "Natural Capital" approach to setting limits of runoff from farms (for water quality reasons) as adopted by Horizon regional council.

The idea of farming within environmental limits has attracted a lot of attention in recent months. Some of the debate has been around the allocation and setting of nitrogen leaching limits; limits on the amount of nitrogen that can be allowed to leach from a farm or catchment into rivers or lakes. The recent environment court decision on the Horizon's Proposed One Plan (POP) has put the spotlight on the Natural Capital Approach (NCA) which allocates nitrogen leaching rights at a flat rate per hectare that varies with land use class (LUC).

Motu has done a bit of work looking at an alternative approach of nutrient trading - trading the nutrient emissions that pollute waterways within their catchments under a total cap. This ensures waterways can be protected, while the allowable amount of nutrient run off can happen where it can be most efficiently utilised. Dan Marsh touches on this approach in his article too.

Some of Motu's 2009 work on nutrient trading around Rotorua is summed up nicely in this paper.

Nutrient trading for water quality of course has some interesting parallels with emissions trading for greenhouse gases. A similar Motu working paper on allocating units for the New Zealand ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme - covering greenhouse gases) can be found here, with Suzi Kerr's latest thinking on the contentious issue of allocation and fairness in the ETS is covered in this recent presentation by her.

It's all very interesting and contentious stuff - lots of material to look into! Luckily Dan Marsh's article gives a good summary of some of the issues which we are having to confront as we look seriously at farming within environmental limits.

Thanks to Dan Marsh for providing us with the article for this blog.

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.

Thoughts on land use from a young Māori woman

The following post is by AgDialogue participant Ana Ngamoki.

Climate change. Global warming. Greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuels.

These terms, and others, have now been ingrained into everyday conversation. As a young Māori woman, what do they mean exactly? It suggests damage to our tribal lands. Or even a loss of food resources and biodiversity. This leads to loss of land, culture and identity. A familiar pattern is emerging; a new form of ‘colonisation’ maybe? This time however, Māori have an opportunity to shape and partake in discussions to control, to an extent, the climate change situation.

Sustainable development. Renewable energy. Emissions trading scheme. Carbon Credits. AgDialogue.

These terms are perhaps a step in the direction towards recognising our role in managing the effects of climate change. The AgDialogue discussions have been an interesting experience. I am not a farmer, a policy analyst, a scientist or even consider myself an expert in this field. However, I have a vested interest and understanding in Māori, and more specifically Te Whānau a Apanui use of land. Our role as kaitiaki (guardians/ steward) over our lands and foreshore is a part of our culture and identity. It is our responsibility to put in place systems now to ensure future generations have continued access to the resources which our ancestors have left us.

Entering the AgDialogue discussions partway through was a daunting experience. I was suddenly thrust into a room of individuals whose years of experience in their respective fields almost equalled my age (and I am quite old!!). Following my first meeting in November 2011 and an exchange trip to Japan, I was able to reflect on my role within AgDialogue. Sometimes it is not until you travel abroad and participate in other processes that you realise how privileged a position you have been put in. This is what I discovered while I was in Japan. As a member of Kaitikiatanga – Caring for our lands and foreshore; a whānau and hapu not-for-profit organisation and, as tangata whenua, we have been allocated a voice in a process which some people and organisations can only dream of. We have been placed in a position where the voices of tangata whenua can be shared within a National Working group and climate change policy can now reflect these voices, aspirations and values.

The most interesting experience for me has been learning and absorbing information and stories from experienced individuals. Nitrification inhibitors were a foreign language to me prior to joining this group, so too were some of the scientific terms associated with climate change. This process has been a window by which I have been able to view how they can be simplified and turned into appealing prototypes such as a cooking show, an educational farming game, and so forth. So as a young Māori woman, witnessing this process has made it a lot easier to understand and work through a complex issue and turn it into a more manageable situation for tangata whenua.

Why do we care about agricultural emissions?

In 2007, agricultural emissions accounted for more than 48% of New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions (Ministry for the Environment, 2009) and 13.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2007c). The question of what response will effectively address these emissions is of critical importance to New Zealand and the world. However, ensuring that our response is effective requires us to first ask a different question: why do individuals, communities, companies and government in New Zealand care about agricultural emissions? A recent Motu note by Hugh McDonald and Suzi Kerr responds to this fundamental inquiry; it can be found online here. Its major conclusions are summarised below.

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There are three non-mutually exclusive reasons New Zealanders may want to control agricultural emissions. We may be concerned about the impacts of climate change on New Zealand and the world. We might be motivated to control greenhouse gas emissions due to international pressure and opportunities from others based on their concern about climate change. This international pressure could be felt from two distinct sources: from international organisations and countries, or alternatively, in the form of commercial pressures and opportunities for domestic producers. A third motivation may be that we are interested in complementary goals that can be achieved by targeting agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, such as improving water quality or improving farm efficiency.

The motivations New Zealanders have for addressing agricultural emissions should determine the way that the emissions are addressed; that is, the why should determine the how. Depending on our motivation, we will require our responses to achieve different levels of verifiability or visibility, will have different priorities for technological change, and will focus more or less on communicating internationally. These dimensions are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1: Choosing appropriate responses given our motivations

	Responses
	Visible/Verifiable:	Technology change:	External outreach:
Motivation One: Avoid climate change	Needs to be visible and/or verifiable to the farmer. Needs to be verifiable and visible to New Zealand regulators (if national policy). Effort needs to be visible internationally to encourage others.	Mitigation technologies. Some measurement and monitoring technologies.	Cooperate on mitigation development. Share technologies and knowledge we develop. Actively disseminate knowledge.
Motivation Two: Meet international pressure ·    From countries or international organisations	Must be verifiable by international organisations.	Verifiable mitigation methods.	Demonstrate to international parties that we are meeting commitments.
·    From international consumers/markets	Must be visible to consumers.	Visible mitigation methods. Marketing technologies.	Show effort that is convincing to international consumers.
Motivation Three: Achieve complementary goals	Effect on complementary goals needs to be visible to communities of interest.	Technologies that positively affect our complementary goals.	None unless community of interest is international, e.g. Biodiversity.

When responding to agricultural emissions we also need to ensure that our response is robust to the many different possible futures. While we can control and influence some factors around this issue of agricultural emissions, we have little or no control over other factors , such as the seriousness of the climate problem in the future, the existence and stringency of any binding global agreement, the development of technologies for cheap and effective mitigation, and the global economy and agricultural prices. These will have a large influence on the actual outcome of any agricultural emissions response we make. We need to ensure that whatever responses we choose to make are robust to these many uncertainties; that is, our response will need to be flexible, scalable, effective and low cost.

Our discussion also suggests a few stronger conclusions. If we believe that New Zealand is likely to face a price on carbon emissions in the future, explicit or otherwise, then when making decisions with long-term consequences New Zealanders should focus on responses that will decrease long term global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions while improving global food security. These responses will be characterised by significant international engagement and co-operation, and a focus on mitigation technology development. We will want to develop effective, efficient, socially acceptable ways to control agricultural greenhouse gas emissions so that other countries will emulate us.  The key characteristic of these responses will be integrity; successful responses will focus on long-term global goals, rather than attempting to appeal to international consumers or regulators in the short term.

A second conclusion is also clear: there is an opportunity to broaden the consensus for addressing agricultural emissions by focussing on outcomes other than climate change. New Zealanders are motivated to take actions that will affect agricultural emissions for a wide range of reasons, and not only because they personally care about helping New Zealand meet international emissions commitments or reducing the risk of climate change. For example, many New Zealanders will be more motivated to act to improve local water quality or agricultural profitability. Given that issues such as these can be addressed in a way that will have complementary effects on greenhouse gas emissions, focussing on these issues may be a more effective way to build consensus for action than focussing exclusively on climate change.

The full paper can be found on the Motu website - click here. 

A Farmer's View

Posted on behalf of Sally Lee. Sally farms sheep and beef in West Waikato, is an agricultural consultant, and a member of the AgDialogue group. You can follow what Sally is up to at http://burklee-farm.blogspot.com/

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I accepted the offer of joining the AgDialogue group to broaden my own knowledge on agricultural emissions  and to have some say, if possible, on the future of the ETS on NZ farmers and NZers as a whole. The group is made up of people whom I am beginning to understand more, and who, outside of this group, I would probably never have gotten the opportunity to meet. I hope that this group will be able to inflict some positive change and stimulate understanding of rural concerns to non-rural politicians and others as we progress through this debate.

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As a sheep and beef farmer and a consultant to the pastoral industry, my underlying feeling is that I am opposed to the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) for NZ agriculture in any shape or form.

With the mass of information in the media about the Emissions Trading Scheme, it is extremely easy to get confused.  My belief it that as it stands now, the ETS is purely a tax on farmers collected at the processor level.  There is absolutely no incentive for farmers to change what they are doing on farm, apart to make the extra margin in their bottom line to pay the tax.  Farmers, as with other NZers, are already paying through the use of fuel and energy. Should we be paying again?

However, I am slowly coming to the realisation that the ETS will exist in some form, although maybe not as we currently know it.  So, what should farmers be doing?

As a hill country farmer, it has been suggested that the solution to our emissions is planting pine trees.  I have seen communities in the past lost forever through the planting of mass areas of pine trees and am a little cynical about the long term solution they offer. Also, as an individual farmer, you still require the upfront capital or a joint venture to turn tree planting into reality, this can be limiting especially after the difficult years we have had as drystock farmers. Also, if we take out large blocks of land, regardless of contour or slope, we will reduce our ‘protein’ production which is currently purchased by NZers and international markets. The result of this could be that, yes, NZ may have reduced its emissions, but this food production will be replaced by some other country (with the accompanying emissions), with no net world emissions decrease.

Instead, I believe that many of the answers to the ETS are about good farming practice and improving efficiency on farm.  The obvious way to reduce emissions is to reduce your stocking rate, however, if this is not managed well it can lead to reduced income, and as farmers we would be no better off. Efficiency can also come in the form of improved lambing and calving percentages, better growth rates, and improved pasture production and utilisation. This is known as Best Practice Management. However, this is not new science/technology and many farmers have still not adapted to this way of farming. Why not?  What do we have to do differently to incentivise change? I recently returned from the first national conference on biological farming systems where there were a number of questions raised as to what role a biological system might have in our emissions.

Also, if we are going to go down this ETS path, then what is the country and the world prepared to pay for our produce?  Farmers can’t keep farming with rising costs and red tape.  With the demise of farmers, there are a number of other consequences that NZ must consider. We might achieve our environmental and financial goals, but this might come at the expense of social sustainability. Other important issues include whether NZ can afford to look at ETS in isolation, or should it be incorporating other issues such as water quality and quantity, ecosystems, carbon footprinting, etc.?

Overall, I feel that NZ farmers should not be targeted. Agriculture contributes a large portion of NZ’s GDP and when agriculture does well, so does the country.  Therefore, I believe that NZ needs to pitch in and deal with the problem as a whole. We as NZ should take the bull by the horns and be a world leader – but we need the support of all, and can’t just target agriculture.

Ag Emissions: What is our Goal?

The AgDialogue group is made up of farmers, Government officials and NGOs united by a desire to ensure New Zealand leads the world in finding solutions to agricultural emissions. I find that being part of this group is a unique opportunity to push past the entrenched rhetoric on climate change and start to find solutions that could really work.

Debating these issues through the media does not seem to be constructive for such an important long term issue, as each side lobs their sound-bites into the battle zone, further entrenching their own positions. This is the worst possible situation for such an important issue. The evidence indicates that climate change requires urgent action, and New Zealand is uniquely placed to lead on a response to agricultural emissions. Adapting to a low emissions world will take time to learn new skills and make the necessary investments, all of which needs to start now. However, without greater certainty no one in their right mind will start to make the necessary changes.

Yet once we agree what we want to achieve, Kiwis are notorious for being able to get on and make it work. The difficult times we faced as a nation in the 1980s pushed us towards some world leading actions on natural resource management (fishing) and agricultural subsidies. Sure, we made some mistakes in implementing the change, and the shift certainly was tough, but the fact that today we have among the strongest farming and fishing sectors in the world is a testament to our resilience, determination and creativity. The difference in the 1980s was that the changes were forced upon us. If we act now, we could lead the world once again and most importantly we could do it on our own terms.

Discussions about what we are trying to achieve, or where we are heading, are all too rare in New Zealand. We are a practical nation, deeply suspicious about concepts and strategies, preferring to focus on what we are going to do. This is great, and is probably the reason we are so successful at solving problems once they become clear. The trouble is that sometimes when the battle is waged over the policies alone, what we are actually trying to achieve is obscured from view.

All our national discussions on climate change have focussed solely on one tool, and a flawed one at that: the Emissions Trading Scheme. Should agriculture be in or out? This narrow line of questioning completely misses the point. Once we have agreed what we are trying to achieve with agricultural emissions, it is simply a matter of working out how to do it. We have shown time and again that if we work together, this bit of the process is easy. Any change always creates winners and losers, but we are a small country, and we can work these things out.

The first tranche of the AgDialogue sessions have focussed very much on what our aim should be, and I am aiming to distil, for discussion, what I have taken from the conversation so far.

Our Vision is that over the next 20 years New Zealand lays the groundwork for having the lowest possible emissions for each amount of food we grow by 2031.

But we aren’t agnostic about how this is achieved. Along the way we also expect that:

Incentives are faced by those that can make a difference to emissions – the point of obligation must be on the farmer, otherwise the charge is merely a tax.

Provide the maximum possible certainty to make long-term investment decisions – we need wide bi-partisan agreement on the way forward so that farmers can start planning and adapting.

Costs are borne by those who cause the greatest impact – we need to make sure that the way we account and charge for emissions actually matches their impact on the environment. It is not clear that this is the case for methane under the approach we have adopted from Kyoto.

Any incentives to reduce emissions actually work – price based systems are not a silver bullet, consideration needs to be given to softer approaches like advice and skills development. There is also little point charging for emissions that can’t yet be reduced; again, the way we currently account for methane is under question here.

The creation of environmental limits is consistent across all areas – we need to be aware of the other environmental constraints that are developing (such as water quality), and ensure that whatever is agreed works in those areas too. In particular the way we deal with nitrous oxide emissions has to dovetail with concerns about nitrogen leaching into rivers. Killing two birds with one stone should be the goal.

Balance long term investments and short term profitability – we want incentives to encourage farmers to prepare for and invest in the long term. This will mean that when the world acts on emissions, we will be in a pole position to benefit. However, this system shouldn’t cause production to move overseas to countries without similar incentives in the short term. Modelling indicates this shouldn’t happen with carbon prices around $25 per tonne (even without free allocation).[1]

Give farmers time to adapt – introduction should be staged to allow farmers time to adapt and minimise social upheaval.

In the 1980s we didn’t have the luxury of time to consider how to act, we simply had to do something. If we don’t begin dealing with emissions now, then we face the risk of another 1980s moment where change is needed immediately, regardless of the side effects and upheaval that may cause. On the other hand if we act now, we have the luxury of taking charge of our own destiny and facing the future on our own terms. This will not be easy, but is far more attractive than putting our head in the sand and hoping for the best.

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[1] http://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/09_16.pdf