Auckland Farmers call for national debate on Paris Agreement exit

At the province's annual conference earlier this month, committee member Deborah Alexander moved a remit to this effect, seconded by immediate past president, Wendy Clark. The remit was passed and will be tabled at Feds' annual conference in Christchurch next month.

Alexander said withdrawing from the agreement would solve farmers' present problems with forests being planted on grazing land to gain carbon credits.

"We're not targeting the source," she said.

"We should be getting out of the Paris Agreement. It would cause people to flock to become members of the federation."

She also questioned whether New Zealand's commitments under the agreement, which came into effect in 2020, were legally enforceable.

Former Auckland dairy chair, John Sexton, said he believed the federation had got sidetracked on the issue.

"We've forgotten about the basics," he said.

"Agricultural emissions are supposed to be causing warming but that's nonsense."

He claimed that ruminant methane emissions made up only one part in four million of the gases causing global warming.

"We are wasting billions of dollars around the world."

Both Alexander and Sexton are founder members of the Methane Science Accord between Groundswell, 50 Shades of Green, Rural Advocacy Network and Facts about Ruminant Methane (FARM) which wants a zero tax on ruminant methane.

Meat and Wool national chair, Toby Williams, who attended the conference, said the debate was a healthy one to have at the federation's national conference in a few weeks' time and he would be comfortable with the policy the federation's national board put forward.

"We have tried to ask Government and Treasury what the cost would be of withdrawing but they wouldn't engage," he said.

Pressed on what his personal view was he said he didn't know enough about the consequences of withdrawing - "but if we did, I wouldn't be boohooing".

Auckland Meat and Wool chair, Peter Anich, said his view was that what New Zealand did wouldn't make any difference globally.

"The world's biggest populations and industrial polluters are not signed up to it," he said.

"Having to pump billions into the European Union for them to decide what third world countries they want to assist in climate change mitigation is wrong, wrong, wrong."

Climate change was being caused by population growth, not farming, but if more New Zealand farmland went into forestry, earning carbon credits which were often going to overseas countries, this country would not have the critical mass to keep exporting agricultural products.

"We're on a hiding to nothing."

Former Auckland policy manager, Richard Gardner, sounded a note of caution, saying it would be a mistake for the federation to take too strong a position on the Paris Agreement.

"It certainly needs to be looked at," he said.

"No one is meeting their targets, and it looks as if it's going to fall over anyway. But if we take an extreme position, we could be targeted. We don't want to force the Government to do something that's not in New Zealand's best interests."