DairyNZ chair wants cross-party deal
New DairyNZ chair Tracy Brown says bipartisan agreement among political parties on emissions pricing and freshwater regulations would greatly help farmers.
New Zealand's pig farmers say while they are committed to playing their part in reducing agricultural emissions, the current proposals for livestock emissions pricing are unfair to the sector.
Pork NZ has made these comments in the wake of the He Waka Eke Noa Primary Sector Climate Action Partnership's (HWEN) recently completed consultation on policy options for pricing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.
Pork NZ chief executive Brent Kleiss says New Zealand pig farming has a small environmental footprint relative to other parts of the primary production sector - producing 0.2% of agricultural emissions against 242,600 pigs.
Kleiss says the NZ pork sector supports a farm-level pricing scheme but has concerns about the current proposals.
"Pig farming differs significantly from pastoral farming because pigs are monogastric [having a single compartmented stomach like humans and poultry]. So, they naturally produce lower methane emissions than ruminants like cattle or sheep [ferments food in a special stomach prior to digestion]," he explains.
"Pig farming systems are also very different to pastoral farming systems. Therefore, we believe more work is needed to assess whether a price on emissions is a suitable policy approach for our sector."
Kleiss believes that with emissions from pigs set to be priced from 2025, a farm-level scheme designed for ruminants could be adapted for the pork industry. But he adds that the level of time and resources that would be required to do this and investment needed would have to be consistent with the anticipated benefits of pig emission pricing.
"Our low emissions profile and the nature of our sector means reductions in our emissions will require different solutions rather than a 'one size fits all' approach."
Despite the country's pig sector's low emissions output, compared to beef and sheep, its small numbers make it an imperfect comparison. This is despite the indubitable fact that monogastric animals do produce less emissions than ruminants.
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