Opinion: Jane Smith

Convince me it is worth spending $183 million via the Agrizero ponzi scheme to find a way to reduce four millionths of a degree of warming per year attributed to New Zealand livestock.

Find a calculator willing or able to work out the cost of this per degree of ‘warming’.

The collective spend by agricultural organisations and taxpayers over the past two decades on the great methane gravy train to design the emperor’s new clothes, has now surpassed $930 Million.

Rural rhetoric suggests that we have been recently saved by the demise of He Waka Eka Noa and an exit from a default obligation in the ETS, this is not correct. While both of those previous pathways were indeed unpalatable, our supposed saviour is now vast swathes of mitigation expenditure until we create a livestock sector that we no longer recognise.

One that forces farmers off the hills and into intensive feedlot production and one that corners us to select livestock genetics on political traits rather than productive traits.

The irony is that they are chasing a “solution” to a “problem” that has never been tangibly identified, let alone accurately quantified or qualified.

The clown show continues while the band plays on, thinly glossed over as “what our global consumer expects of us” -  which is simply an empty sentence that rolls off the tongues of politicians and agricultural boardroom clones with ease and vigour.

This self-perpetuating parody continues to bloom when fed, watered and wheeled out by ag sector leaders, co-operatives and levy organisations all the while being underpinned by taxpayer money -  in a country that can’t afford something that vaguely resembles a first world health care system or functioning roads.

A key point that continues to be missed in this debacle is that if you culled every single ruminant animal in New Zealand tomorrow (or every single molecule of natural biogenic methane produced by them) this would make NO quantifiable difference to global climate change, be it warming or cooling.

Why have we jumped straight on the methane mitigation bus before asking what we are actually mitigating?

Why do we continue to throw hundreds of millions of dollars that we do not have into a self-sabotaging strategy that will risk the future of the New Zealand sheep, beef and deer sector and its contribution to diverse rural communities and what used to be known as a rockstar economy?

Many scientists have jumped on the gravy train, quick to announce the what, when, who and how; without asking the key question – why.

If an award was given for the most misguided misuse of funds it would go to ‘Agrizero’ (with the runners-up being unwinding decades of genetic progression by selecting sheep and cattle on supposed low methane genetics -  closely followed by a $29 Million taxpayer-funded methane satellite).

An onlooker may suggest that the agricultural companies funding Agrizero have surplus money to launder through the greenwash, which is effectively all that they have done.

An alarming low level of understanding by companies involved in Agriziero of what they have actually signed up to or what they will actually achieve is worthy of a full taxpayer enquiry, given the 50% of crown funds that have been “invested”.

If only these companies or the crown had put the same time, effort and resources into promoting the efficiency of New Zealand pastoral farming, or even been charitable enough to share our carbon efficient pastoral I.P with the rest of the world -  this could have been our greatest contribution to cooling the current climate change hysteria.

Instead, they decided to double-down and apologise for a crime we didn’t do – even stating when questioned that this is simply the easiest path to take.

One bank involved in Agrizero mentioned that they didn’t want to overstate New Zealand farmer’s pastoral efficiency when it came to carbon metrics as they had farming clients in other countries that they didn’t want to make look bad.

The premium NZ beef and lamb market has built its reputation on being natural, pure, grass-fed, free-range, hormone and GE free.

The quality-assurance programmes we have are world-leading and strict on any interference with the animal – even the feeding of grain in banned in most programmes.

The irony is, that the risks to our industry reputation from the use of novel biotechnology tools including methane vaccines and feed additives that interfere with their natural rumination cycle seem to have been ignored  - what does the end consumer actually  think?

Clear signals from overseas markets are that end consumers actually care very little about ‘Scope 3’ emissions including methane emissions; but care greatly about animal welfare, pure and natural products and they want it at the cheapest possible net price – not a sight nor sound of an actual tangible premium being willingly paid.

The reality is that consumers want the earth, until they are asked to pay for it. At which time their priorities lapse simply back to price, quality and food safety.

Do what you like while chasing a premium in your market with a subsequent price tag attached to your products; Silver Fern Farms, Fonterra, Anzco and Synlait -  but do not come in with sweeping generic statements about global consumers being willing to pay a premium for our commodity products if we are “seen” to be doing the right thing.

We already are doing the right thing, and for those that want to take it a step further in a bid for your ambiguous premium, go ahead.

Premiums need to be market-led, not market-bled.

As a farmer, I do not accept you making a false guilty plea on our behalf in an attempt to get a shortened sentence for a crime that we didn’t do.

At the very least we deserve a trial by science, not a sentencing by politics.

By Jane Smith

North Otago Farmer, Environmentalist and Agricultural advocate.