Editorial: Dead and buried?

HWEN was already on shaky ground with delays meaning it would struggle to be legislated before the election. This was on top of recent reports surfacing of a breakdown in negotiations between the Government and farming groups on a final deal.

The National Party released its agricultural emissions policy last week, which shows it has backed away from the current HWEN plan and will instead introduce a new way to get collective agreement around farm emissions. It would scrap HWEN and give the farmers until 2030 to sort out the problems relating to dealing with emissions – a move that has been largely endorsed by farmer lobby groups.

Key parts of National’s policy include giving farmers the tools they need to reduce emissions – including recognising on-farm sequestration, measuring farm-level emissions by 2025 and updating biotech rules; keeping agriculture out of the ETS but implementing a fair and sustainable pricing system for on-farm agricultural emissions by 2030; and establishing an independent board – with a power of veto retained by the Ministers of Climate Change and Agriculture –to implement the pricing system.

National will also limit the conversion of productive farmland to forestry for carbon farming purposes to protect local communities and food production, as well as promising to review the methane targets.

Meanwhile, despite not having met with agriculture sector leaders since becoming PM Chris Hipkins – and a coterie of ministerial colleagues – met up with farming leaders at last week’s Fieldays to try and get HWEN back on track and lure them away from National’s attractive proposition for dealing with agriculture emissions.

However, one would bet – from the flack farm sector leaders have taken over their meek interactions with Government over HWEN in recent years – they are likely to nod politely and wait for the outcome election before committing hare kari.

Ironically, despite the stumbling block of getting agreement on-farm emissions, the latest Stats NZ figures show that farmers are on track to achieve a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 without needing a pricing mechanism.