J Dory wrote:It was a shit article, but I have sympathy for dairy farmers given I was raised on a dairy farm and know that there are lots of farmers out there doing their best to minimize the environmental impact of their farms. Jared, you make two points that I often hear thrown out as facts:
-Dairy farming makes up a HUGE portion of our emissions relative to the size of our population
Does it? Which emmissions are you referring to? CO2? Methane? Do you have any links to scientific research that shows this versus other emmissions sources in NZ? I'd be genuinely interested to see it..
"Agriculture is responsible for producing 48 per cent of New Zealand's carbon emissions, according to the Environment Ministry.
Landcare Research estimates almost two thirds of that is methane produced by belching and farting cattle and sheep.
The Crown Research Institute estimates those methane emissions have increased 10 per cent since 1990 as more farms have converted to dairy.
It is the biggest blot on New Zealand's checkered climate change record.
On a per-capita basis, the New Zealand economy has the ignominy of the highest methane emissions in the world at 600 kilograms per person – six times the global average."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming ... t-to-crack
Like I said, this is not "lets pick on farmers for the hell of it", its a "lets reduce our carbon emissions as a nation - oh look, agriculture accounts for 50% of it, seems like the most OBVIOUS place to start".
Now, it is difficult because obviously saying we have the highest per capita methane emissions is unfair - as we export most of our produce it is theoretically emissions for the rest of the world. But we are past this, we are past trying to shift the burden to others, or wait for others to act. We need to look after ourselves and do the best we can.
J Dory wrote:
-intensive practices that have decimated our waterways in recent years
NZ waterways have been bad for a long time. I've seen efforts by farmers, including my own family farm when we still had it, to reduce effluent and fertilizer run off into waterways. Fencing of waterways, use of effluent as a fertilizer to minimize use of phosphate based chemical fertilizer are a couple of examples. No doubt there are farms out there where the farmer doesn't give a fuck. But is there an actual recent decline in water quality directly attributable to dairy farming? Again, I'd be genuinely interested to see the studies on this.
I agree with MPs earlier post, we need investment in research on what the real problems are, what the real sustainable solutions are. Dairy farming is part of the problem, one of many environmental issues challenging NZ. But if you single out farmers, of course they are going to get defensive. Improving the environmental impact of dairy farming should be part of a national well funded science based environmental policy.
Drawing a correlation between regions with a significant increase in dairy farming and those with large increases in nitrogen loads, Wright said the rapid growth had led to a ''big increase'' in the concentration of nitrogen in waterways.
Canterbury, which has highest rate of converted land, had a 27 per cent increase in nitrogen loads between 1996 to 2008.
Wright predicts between 2008 to 2020 nitrogen loads will increase by 15 per cent in Canterbury, and nationally there will be a six per cent growth. Likewise, phosphorus loads are expected to increase in Canterbury by three per cent between 2008 to 2020.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/9 ... ming-water
An article with a lot of opinions from people on both sides but there seems to be data there.
I absolutely agree with everything you've said here. Its obviously not every single farmer, and for example the system Morgan has suggested; levies and offsets, would most likely see your family receiving money as a result of their environmental efforts, while farms with poor records would be taxed. The polluters basically pay the best practice farms, the ultimate incentive to improve your systems.
And technology is a must, but I guess my overall point here is first you need to get to a place where there is universal acceptance of a problem before any solutions can begin. My issue with articles like the one posted, and many others on the topic, is that there seems an unwillingness by government and SOME farmers to accept that there is in fact a problem, mainly because "NZ is a business" in the eyes of many and no one wants to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. NZ is pretty lucky on the technology side in that our relatively small country makes it easy to quickly test and roll out advancements as they come in.
