Worlds gone f***ing mad!

delilah said:

We aren't talking about emissions. We are talking about reducing man-made warming of the planet. Yes ?

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No. But I wish it was a yes.
Unfortunately nations signed up to lower their GHG emissions over a specified time. They did not sign up to lower their warming contribution, that science has been developed much more recently. Therefore the NZ farming sector had to act, or would have been taxed out of existence. They did this to get control for the minimum cost going back to individual farmers, use the tax as a revenue stream to advance science projects to which they give approval, and defend food production and farming viability with the best science as it comes available.
They could have given the middle finger to the current woke left leaning Gov't. But that would have been tantamount to giving the hangman a new rope and having no say of to whom he used it on.

Global ovine said:

Exactly. It was "devise your own industry solution or have the current emissions trading scheme (ETS) imposed", that which will be imposed on all other sectors. That was not a option as under the current carbon price of $NZ85/T it would put every farmer out of business. Even at half that price, almost all pastoral farmers would be uneconomic and cropping would be limited to no-till and less than half the fertiliser usage.

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I'm a no tiller through and through but even I know its not better than good quality grazed grass and clover with prudent use of urea!

kiwi pom said:

You're saying there's no emissions from farming?

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Wrong question. That’s the problem.

Farming has emissions.
It also has absorption of CO2 into grain, grass, wool, muscles etc. Humans then eat some of these and release the carbon back into the atmosphere. Ergo humans emit carbon. We must tax humans.
Farming also has sequestration into the soil.

Other industries? Not so much. Go on, tell me which other industries absorb/sequester carbon? Forestry … and …………………..

Your govt above all others in the world should be doing everything they can to:
1. Understand the science.
2. Lead the way in asking the proper questions, thereby avoiding "solutions" that won’t actually work in helping the actual problem.

Global ovine said:

No. But I wish it was a yes.
Unfortunately nations signed up to lower their GHG emissions over a specified time. They did not sign up to lower their warming contribution, that science has been developed much more recently. Therefore the NZ farming sector had to act, or would have been taxed out of existence. They did this to get control for the minimum cost going back to individual farmers, use the tax as a revenue stream to advance science projects to which they give approval, and defend food production and farming viability with the best science as it comes available.
They could have given the middle finger to the current woke left leaning Gov't. But that would have been tantamount to giving the hangman a new rope and having no say of to whom he used it on.

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Not a tactic we haven't seen before

DaveGrohl said:

I absolutely realise that you find yourselves in a seemingly impossible situation and I do sympathise massively. However, the signing up to these agreements by govts simply cannot be an excuse for a total failure to understand the science. GWP* didn‘t even exist when these agreements were drawn up. They will make no difference to warming.

Wrongly calculated emissions metrics do not equal warming impact. Warming impact is the metric that is all important here. Emissions is like working out the weight of something using a tape measure. And because your govt is thick as mince and leading the way in this area it’s going to be seen by every other govt in the world as politically acceptable to force through policies based on stupidity.

Using things like feed additives merely alters the location of certin aspects of the carbon cycle. They will not alter warming impacts because the same carbon atoms are still going round and round. All this hand-wringing over breed choice and months to slaughter is reducing sequestration alongside methane output, nature is a zero sum balance above the Earth’s crust. increasing wetlands? Wetlands that emit methane? Or have you guys got a big-industry-altered type of new wetland down there?

Warming is all about fossil carbon being released into the atmosphere. You shouldn’t be having to deal with this on the same basis as say Saudi Arabia. The 30% methane reduction targets are all about fossil methane. Your govt seems to be too thick to understand this. How the hell is Russia going to tax its permafrost methane emissions? Who are they going to tax? That’s how batsh1t mental this is.

Your govt is looking for an answer to a question that has no scientific reason to be asked.

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The problem for agriculture is nitrogen and the way we produce it. Take that away and we could certainly solve our issues with fossil fuel consumption massively. But who goes hungry first? That is the cold hard reality of it.

I think in fairness to @Global ovine he is doing a very good job of how to turn a threat into an opportunity. Even if we all think it is nonsense.

DaveGrohl said:

Other industries? Not so much. Go on, tell me which other industries absorb/sequester carbon? Forestry … and …………………..

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Gas bottling plants?

SilliamWhale said:

The problem for agriculture is nitrogen and the way we produce it. Take that away and we could certainly solve our issues with fossil fuel consumption massively. But who goes hungry first? That is the cold hard reality of it.

I think in fairness to @Global ovine he is doing a very good job of how to turn a threat into an opportunity. Even if we all think it is nonsense.

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Just a government that can't/won't admit it was wrong, nart new there

Kiwi Pete said:

it's truly a global issue, and this has been coming since I was a schoolboy.

Back then, people still talked about "global warming" instead of climate change, so we have come a way.

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When I was at school they talked about another ice age coming and we were supposed to be in it now!

Northernlights said:

Well said there are nearly 60% less cattle in my neck of the woods than there were in the sixties when I was a kid. We are not the problem. At any one time currently there are 283,000 aircraft in the sky round the world .Certainly not 60% less aircraft or human beings or cars, than in the sixties. One of the positives from less aircraft in the skies in the last two years was some of the best ice growth in the Arctic early last winter both in extent and thickness this century. No insulating brown layer of engine gases at the edge of earths atmosphere just as happened in the days after 9/11 which was driven home to me when a photo from space highlighted the brown ring of exhausts gases a few days before 9/11 compared with one taken just a few days after showing a clean white ring at the edge. The planet could heal itself very quickly if we stopped polluting it. At best I think we humans have only about 50 years left on this planet before it becomes uninhabitable. My daughter who has a phd in astrophysics from Edinburgh University agrees with me.

Yesterday I watched 6 polar flights heading north leaving their vast contrails in a clear blue sky round about 2.00pm We also have the return of these gigantic cruise liners in the Firth going to Invergordon after an absence of two years. I for one will take nothing to do with carbon reducing nonsense for farmers until all these other sources are subject to the same scrutiny. Doing plenty on farm already with old fashioned 7 course rotation and using lots of red and white clover to elimnate a lot of artificial nitrogen and hence oil use.

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What will utililise the clover? On good ground with high inputs over 7 years one could produce 16t wheat, 3t barley, 2T beans and 1 t osr, with no fert, no livestock one would be lucky to total output of 8t wheat and 2T barley in the same period of time? When we are all without livestock the gloop boffins will need to figure out out to use the clover silage as the main input in their fake meat factories!

DaveGrohl said:

Wrong question. That’s the problem.

Farming has emissions.
It also has absorption of CO2 into grain, grass, wool, muscles etc. Humans then eat some of these and release the carbon back into the atmosphere. Ergo humans emit carbon. We must tax humans.
Farming also has sequestration into the soil.

Other industries? Not so much. Go on, tell me which other industries absorb/sequester carbon? Forestry … and …………………..

Your govt above all others in the world should be doing everything they can to:
1. Understand the science.
2. Lead the way in asking the proper questions, thereby avoiding "solutions" that won’t actually work in helping the actual problem.

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I do think the science is understood, it's just that it's been based on very flawed thinking and that's created completely erroneous models and assumptions.

Trickle-truth, in action.

There are various reasons for this - firstly, as @Global ovine says, this was agreed upon several decades ago (the Bolger gov't, IIRC?) and in those days the global warming thing had a huge cult-like following, the warming potential of various gases and scenarios was based on this.

Therefore methane (a considerable "greenhouse gas") was singled out, and this was of course endorsed by the oil /manufacturing companies as it bought them time to ramp up the propaganda against ruminant agriculture, to hide their own impact on air pollution while technology caught up.

And, it worked.
Despite the advancement of understanding and revamping the modelling to a less incorrect state of being, the agreement still stands. Take away this basic flawed thinking that methane behaves just like CO² but worse and there really is no justification to target livestock farming.

Most countries had more sense than to sign on the dotted line, because of significant other industrial interests (eg gas, coal, oil) that would be severely impacted if they were to agree to reductions in emissions.

During this interim period, the concept of "offsetting" was conceived, to permit polluters to keep polluting, however the considerable offsetting available within the agricultural sector is denied for obvious-to-some reasons - it doesn't impact animal agriculture enough to reduce food supply to subsistence levels.
It doesn't impoverish whole nations, and it doesn't shift control away from individual producers towards conglomerates and corporations.

Private ownership of property just doesn't fit with the new agenda, and this is the tip of one of the Michelin bars under private property ownership.
You'll note many of the more socialist/communist-leaning TFFers like to howl "tax the wealthy more" without realising that they are the wealthy - you just have to laugh.

Most of a nations' true wealth lies in agriculture and primary industry, and the pitchforks look like this.

CopperBeech said:

In theory you should be able to breed animals which are lower methane producers. They want a reduction in animal ag in order to drop methane emissions ...... we all know that’s shite but you have to play the game. So they want less animals for less methane, so let’s try same number or more animals, less methane. And now let’s get their house in order ?

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You do that by breeding animals that reach finishing weight in the shortest time...

Aspiring Peasants said:

When I was at school they talked about another ice age coming and we were supposed to be in it now!

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Spot on.
We don't know what we don't know, and for some reason it's "better" to pretend we do, than to simply accept that we don't know everything.

It's a function swimming in a sea of opinions, that we would rather not look bad - this phenomena destroys conversations and impacts people every day - this "being right", at any cost to self

That's why most of what is available is based on "modelling" rather than data, observation, critical thinking.

(Look at that whole conversation around covid/vaccine and what we might pretend that we know - it's not knowable yet but we may pretend in order to "be right" and "not look bad" - and then consider the impacts on conversations, relationships, and human health from that)

It's quite astonishing when you sit back and just look at the inauthenticity of what people speak as "fact", most of it merely stories

farmerm said:

You do that by breeding animals that reach finishing weight in the shortest time...

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Depends where they get their emissions from, do they go to the oil well to eat or to the field of grass grown by solar power?

Henarar said:

Depends where they get their emissions from, do they go to the oil well to eat or to the field of grass grown by solar power?

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well now that depends on what emission you are most concerned by... The post specified breeding an animal that produces less methane, not the one that gave the lowest overall impact on climate. Highlights again why ruminant methane is really a very poor metric!

BrianV said:

Beginning to have the feeling that other than Thatcher electing a woman premier might not be the smartest idea!

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I don't think it's the fact she is a woman that is the problem, more that fact that she worked for Tony Blair before returning to NZ, she has managed to take his reverse Midas touch back home with her and is capable of like Tony, messing up everything she interferes with.

DaveGrohl said:

Landfill is largely cyclical too but you’re otherwise bang on about new sources of methane. It’s the source that’s crucial, did it originate in atmospheric CO2 recently? No warming. Buried underground for 000s of millions of years? Entirely warming, irrespective of it being methane or whatever.

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All methane is cyclical. Globally there is vastly more landfill not than 100 years ago but there are fewer ruminants on the planet than 100 years ago. The growth in landfill is a new source. But yes, ultimately it all comes down to our massive conversion of locked away fossil carbon into CO2

Global ovine said:

Oh come on guys. If you stimulate plant growth with N onto any plant species they will take up more P and K as a response. Legumes just do better at a slightly higher soil P and pH level than grasses.

The protein content of clovers, although important, is superceded by higher digestibility. The return on any additional fertiliser nutrient input to gain animal growth/output remains high, especially on current world protein prices, even at today's fertiliser costs. The worldwide problem is too much unnecessary nutrients are applied due to insufficient soil testing and buying off snake-oil salesmen, coupled with poor grazing management of what has grown.

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Yes of course to all of that, i just thought it was @Kiwi Pete that isnt too keen on clover and its place in his 'au natural' grazing schemes
just the mining/ haulage /spreading of P/K / lime no artificially manufactured N to reduce C. footprint, and by quite a lot probably, just a naturally produced 'buckshe'
and "what farmer would turn down something free" ( Doug Avery ).

More grazing plant development please from those shrewd Kiwi Plant breeders, ( for the likes of Lucerne rather than for just mowing/conservation type and continued lower phytoestrogen producing RC varieties ) because i don't think we don't seem to do that sort of thing so much these days.

CopperBeech said:

In theory you should be able to breed animals which are lower methane producers. They want a reduction in animal ag in order to drop methane emissions ...... we all know that’s shite but you have to play the game. So they want less animals for less methane, so let’s try same number or more animals, less methane. And now let’s get their house in order ?

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so, less animals, less grassland, loss of soil organic matter and fertility and use more fertliser to produce the food, which will probably be less nutrient dense and then add in, if people eat less protein they will end up eating more carbs, so in the end we will have a far less healthy population and screwed soils. Great plan. Are all the environmentalists twp?

Henarar said:

Gas bottling plants?

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No fossil fuels burned in that process is there. Gas bottling plants that produce N? Indeed.

Global ovine said:

Spelling out the results of research to date;

• low methane emission sheep exist, the research has been done and quantified.
• best sheep emit 13% less than average. Worst 15% more than average. Normal distribution curve.
• if most maternal breed stock rams used in studs were ranked better than average, the NZ national flock would improve by 1% pa.
• purchasing maternal rams from the top 10% of breeders for the traits Methane and Growth would increase the progress by about 4% pa.
• it would be faster progress by increasing lamb growth by 10% as the longer an animal lives, the more methane it emits.
• there is no case for livestock reduction, but strong case for improved grazing management.
• the increased use of legumes is key.
• the dairy and beef industries are deep into measuring emissions from cattle. Results will be about 5 years after sheep.
• dairy emissions may be aided by feed additives currently under development (native NZ seaweed being a prime example).

Leading breeders are receiving a price premium for low emission rams due to buyer expectation of including this trait in their Farm GHG calculations for this tax. Some farm calculations will show a rebate. This is the carrot to at least getting to zero.
NZ's largest beef exporter already markets zero carbon beef at a premium price from farmers who can quantify this under their Farm Assurance Scheme documentation. The tonnage is constrained by lack of supply.

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As I keep banging on When the concern is about changes in methane in the atmosphere, because methane is cyclical what matters is where the new methane is coming from. Agriculture should be rewarded for any measures that reducing methane emissions but should not pay any penalty for for the increase in atmospheric methane, THE INCREASE IN ATMOSTPHERIC METANE DOES NOT COME FROM LIVESTOCK!!