"Our" business?
OPINION: One particular bone the Hound has been gnawing on for years now is how the chattering classes want it both ways when it comes to the success of NZ's dairy industry.
Farmers would respond to clear price and penalty signals on environmental issues such as cutting emissions, says Dr Tanira Kingi, a Scion research leader.
The conversation has been going on within Fonterra for years about a pricing mechanism that can incentivise investment and change by farmers, Kingi claims.
“Farmers respond to price signals and they also can respond to penalties,” says Kingi, an expert in agricultural development and primary sector analysis.
“The introduction of agriculture into the ETS (emissions trading scheme) and the confirmation of a carbon price… is a component of information that farmers would be able to incorporate into rejgging and reconfiguring their farms,” he told the Environmental Defence Society ‘Tipping Points’ conference in Auckland.
Regarding price signals, giving dairying as an example, he says there is a quality component in there for protein and a penalty for somatic cell counts. But largely if you produce more milk you get the same price as every other farmer.
“So it is an incentive to increase productivity. What is needed is a mechanism to diversify and separate out those farmers who are willing to invest in technology to reduce their emissions output or emissions component against the product output.
“Right now every dairy farmer in the country has an Overseer file that gives a profile of their kilograms of nitrate leached or phosphate leached per hectare and there is also information there on kilograms of greenhouse gases as well.
“We need to move away from kilograms of emissions per hectare to one directly linked to kilograms of output, so that the farmers who are prepared to invest in improved technology to reduce their emissions are rewarded for it.”
Kingi says if regulation is the only tool to meet catchment limits and community expectations on water quality then the farming community will always be behind.
Carolyn Mortland, Fonterra’s director of social responsibility, says environmental standards within five years will be far higher than today.
“It is not helping anyone in New Zealand to not factor in the externalities because we need to adapt,” she says.
“Our market is an international market, 95% of our food goes offshore and there are many dynamics in play.”
These include the millennial consumers and what they want, what our competitors are doing with food production in Europe and the US, the influence of new technologies and how the producers of the future in Africa and parts of Asia will respond, “not to mention our responsibility here in NZ to protect our environment”.
Of course it’s scary for farmers, she says, because it means a transition. We need to know the environmental limits.
“I started feeling hopeful about water quality in New Zealand when we started saying ‘let’s find out how much our rivers can take’. It is mind boggling that we haven’t known.”
According to the most recent Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey, farmer confidence has inched higher, reaching its second highest reading in the last decade.
From 1 October, new livestock movement restrictions will be introduced in parts of Central Otago dealing with infected possums spreading bovine TB to livestock.
Phoebe Scherer, a technical manager from the Bay of Plenty, has won the 2025 Young Grower of the Year national title.
The Fencing Contractors Association of New Zealand (FCANZ) celebrated the best of the best at the 2025 Fencing Industry Awards, providing the opportunity to honour both rising talent and industry stalwarts.
Award-winning boutique cheese company, Cranky Goat Ltd has gone into voluntary liquidation.
As an independent review of the National Pest Management Plan for TB finds the goal of complete eradication by 2055 is still valide, feedback is being sought on how to finish the job.
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