Whangārei discussion
Housekeeping
Staff: Glen Lauder (independent facilitator), Julie Collins, Kate Simpson, Warren Gray,
Margie Wheeler, Oliver Powell, Rachael Anderson (Apologies: David Mead)
Attendees (inc. govt): 13
Beef, dairy (sharemilker), sheep & beef (?left of Julie), dairy/beef/forestry, sheep/beef/bull,
beef
Margie has this and can send – Jef had asked if we could share participants contacts Notes
• Process - where to from here for us? -> Julie answered - cited s215 report deadline
and final decisions in Feb. Once decisions are made, we move into implementation /
operational design. We need to know any major problems now
• Government has overturned recommendations a participant thought were good.
Sheep and beef farms wil be worse off despite (in Northland) the amount of
sequestration & good practice embedded
• Large non-farming companies are buying up farms and planting them out instead of
doing anything about their emissions - ‘sledgehammer approach’
• The amount of vegetation in Whangārei is symbolic of what is happening across
Northland - lots of indigenous sequestration in place already. Generally the ‘ratio’ of
emissions to sequestration is different up here
o Participant had 2 issues - the level of sequestration recognised & the contract
system “didn’t exhibit the amount of trust that we normally see in society”. As
a society other laws show a lot of initial trust and then there’s an auditing
system. The contract system is overbearing - you can’t practically check
every detail, so trust is needed in those working on the ground
• Farmers are seeing climate change happening in front of them and are being
punished by its effects. They feel this keenly and are paying for it. Sediment issues
caused by CC
• Riparian wil be recognised but a lot of farms in Northland don’t have opportunities for
riparian, just patches of bush. Upset that this wil not be able to be offset against
emissions
• Participant - 48% of gross emissions are from agriculture, in terms of net emissions
it’s 38%. If we drop to the 2050 targets in gross terms we’l be ahead of schedule for
Kyoto Protocol in net terms. We are happy to do our bit, but the only way I can lower
emissions is to grow less grass/take pasture out of the system - there’s no
technology I can use. Lowering stock numbers won’t do anything if they’re spread
over the same area.
• Regenerating bush fenced off for 20 years - half a hectare and doesn’t qualify for the
ETS. Can’t prove it was in grass in 1990. The ETS is too complicated and farmers
don’t always get the credit
• 47% reduction would really hurt, but can take the hit of the initial levy
• Perverse incentives - I would return land to wetland, but if it’s not recognised as
sequestration I wil need extra income from that land and wil farm it instead. Farmers
are acting as stewards of the land and don’t feel trusted.
• If we can promote fencing off areas of indigenous bush that wil be a big win - there
are opportunities to increase this across Northland (and there is already a lot)
• Generally - Northland lower stocking rate, less intensively farmed than other parts of
the country
• There have been significant reductions in the last 10 years - what else can we do?
• “If it’s fenced off it can be measured - the technology is there” - rejected govt line that
it’s hard to measure
• Scattered trees - wil need to plant anyway for shelter and shade
• Once bush is fenced off, it just takes off in Northland - there’s no deer - easy to
control with good trapping programmes. Al you need to do is fence it
• “If I turn my back on my farm it would regenerate just like that”
• Management of a stream bed is really important
• Shouldn’t indigenous biodiversity be rewarded more because of the other values that
come with it? If we get this right we wil incentivise indigenous
• More research is needed into soil carbon, and all the research needs to go into what
is best practice
• Money needs to go into incentives/research - this is hugely important because we
don’t have options
• I don’t use supplement and won’t start just to feed an inhibitor when I have enough
grass
• We need a system that works for everyone - dairy and beef are intertwined - if one
suffers so does the other
• For us, breeding is one of our best options, but it’s slow and needs to succeed before
you can start getting rid of worse performing stock. If you don’t breed on your farm
you need to rely on other farmers to do it right
• Selecting breeding based on DNA is on the way, but won’t be ready for 2025
• Risk that dairy won’t pay & send their stock to finishing farms (?)
• There are potential unintended consequences where methane emissions could go up
as people breed more to ensure profits
• If govt is to use sequestration as part of the model we need to rebuild farmers
confidence and communicate that we can measure it at a small scale
• We are all committed to addressing the issue of climate change - risk of the
conversation becoming about impacts on individual farms
• The document puts a lot of responsibility on individuals - participant saw this as a ‘NZ
Inc thing’. c
• Distrust is an issue
• Farmers don’t trust any government-imposed scheme that could benefit them
because government collapsed the ETS. They don’t trust government to set the price
fairly.
• Why can’t we have one farm plan that covers everything - one system that covers
SNAs, sequestration etc?
• Julie - the intention is to make the climate change module part of the wider farm plan
• Requiring multiple different systems don’t work - allow farmers to come up with their
farm plans and don’t drive it from the top down
• We need to understand our target audience
• Governance - pretty drastically different to what was proposed by HWEN - if it’s
appointed from the top down (rather than industry led) that wil create significant
uncertainty, particularly with governmental changes creating potential for 3-year
cycles of appointments
• ‘Us and them’ is not the way forward.
• Most farmers would rather be farming, and the people in this room know more than
99% of farmers about the proposals. Most people’s options are ‘fight or flee’. There is
a lot of misinformation out there, not just in the farming community.
• The discussion document is too long - most farmers won’t even open it. If it could be
condensed in a way that farmers would pick it up they would be less afraid. Most
don’t have the time or headspace to digest all the changes, and they get to the point
where they don’t want to know. This is a long standing issue
• HWEN was important and its progress happened because farmers trusted that they
would do what they said. Government changes to the plan weren’t sensible because
they lost this trust.
• There is a real lack of understanding of the farming community & a perception that
only animal farming is responsible for the problem.
• Glen - Activism has been trying to shift the perception of CC and farming but it has
left us polarised
[Break]
• Margie - how do we use your knowledge to reach the farmers who aren’t here?
• We have all been grappling with this question for a long time. Government is the
other party, and they won’t do anything with our ideas if they don’t meet their
objectives.
• What is happening now with the govt response undermines groups like B&L
• The communication has already happened [as far as most are concerned]
• Farmers don’t want to make submissions
• Māori farm land blocks - a secondary income on ancestral land & wil be hoping to
slip under the radar
• People won’t engage without an understanding of how it’s going to affect them.
Groundswell have taken advantage of this by giving people an ‘easy out’
• It took a lot of time and effort to create the good work in HWEN recommendations - it
felt wasted
• HWEN aimed to make the proposals as fair as possible for all involved and this
balance has been upset in the govt response. Govt have set themselves apart from
being a collaborator when initially they were a partner.
• DNZ/B&L community groups - over dinners - have been durable but wouldn’t work
with a government agenda over the top of it.
• Farmers wil turn up to find out what they need to do, and wil talk amongst
themselves. But if it relies on specific people to get others to come, it’s a pretty
intensive model
• Groundswell campaigning has been by phone & a simple message
• Need to move away from lots of written info to video, on phone, conversations
• Lots of people want to have conversations - need to collaborate and have ‘go-to’
people in the room
• A positive focus at the start helps meetings go well, and it’s better to talk to small
groups so the positive voices feel able to speak
• Technology can be used effectively in big meetings - if people can type and ‘like’
questions, the best ones float to the top - this allows more efficiency in getting to
farmers
• Julie: getting indigenous sequestration right is really important, especial y for
Northland where there’s a lot of indigenous forest. Both HWEN and Govt proposals
recognise both riparian planting and indigenous. It doesn’t matter when the
indigenous was planted, if it’s fenced and pest managed you wil get credit. Is the
anger about government proposal because there’s a separate process for
sequestration?
• Yes - it’s more complex - but also the sequestration rate in the government proposal
is very different from the one in HWEN and they can’t both be right
• A system where sequestration is included in the calculator would be much better. It’s
too expensive to fence off at the current rates. (“this is a submission times 7”)
• Julie - previous efforts had a tension between simplicity and accuracy. Those with the
most to gain wanted every bit of sequestration counted. The same tensions are
playing out here - using averages makes the system simpler, but individuals want
accuracy. Any ideas on how to manage this with the large number of participants?
• Can you make it an option? Julie - the simple system would be preferred by those
who pay less that way
• Participant cited having to use lookup tables vs having to measure.
• Maybe we have to be prepared to sacrifice accuracy ‘for the greater good’. Because
we’re first in the world to signal our intention to do this. We may see the benefit as a
country. There might not be that accuracy but the system as a whole has worked - by
having a decent sequestration rate bush wil be protected which is unambiguously a
good outcome. If the rate is good people wil protect their indigenous
• Participant - my sequestration areas are small but add up - Julie noted they would be
considered under HWEN (no minimum area to date)
• Julie - Govt has chosen the sequestration they have because it tends to be
permanent. A lot of shelter trees go over every time a storm comes through, and
shelterbelts get trimmed often. The problem with these isn’t the measurement - that’s
easy with modern tech - but they lose carbon as well as sequestering it. You might
not claim them but we have been asked to include them - how would this practical y
work?
• Participant - you can’t count individual trees. Shelterbelts are vulnerable, but when
you add them all up they amount to a lot. Individual shelterbelts that are vulnerable
are a small amount of trees - you’re not going to lose all your shelterbelts at once and
when you take one out it’s likely to be replaced. The amount of carbon at risk on an
individual scale is small, but the amount sequestered on all the shelterbelts together
is large
• Participant - is the problem not having the means to calculate shelterbelts, or the
administration of it? Julie - simplicity vs complexity. If you try to track what’s
happening to carbon on an individual farm it’s unmanageable
• Participant - shelterbelts are part of the (my?) farm plan. Julie - clarified that would
likely mean we would require any shelterbelts to be replaced if they’re fel ed
• Participant - trees in a different shape would be recognised but shelterbelts won’t be
• 20% canopy cover is not that many trees per hectare
• Julie - both HWEN and government proposal addressed the issue that sequestration
would need to be paid out of revenue stream that would be falling if the scheme
worked. This was the rationale for putting larger exotics into the ETS (where they are
already eligible) - and farmers could be paid from the economy wide funding
• You could get credit if your sequestration outweighed your emissions and join a
collective (benefit from that credit) - you won’t receive as much money from the levy
but you also won’t have to pay out that credit. Col ectives haven’t been seen as
important but mitigate this issue
• The effective economic cutoff for the ETS is much more than a hectare. If you can
put forest into the ETS it’s the best system, but some smaller areas are eligible but
not worth it. The idea with putting this kind of sequestration into HWEN is the bar is
lower
• Participant - is the reason not to include exotics for cashflow reasons?
• Julie - The debate was whether to include ETS eligible exotics, because if you were
getting enough farmers planting (particularly exotic) there wouldn’t be enough
revenue to fund other mitigations eventually
• But isn’t this encouraging best practice?
• The methane target isn’t a net target - it’s a gross target. Methane reductions need to
be paid for in the same system but sequestration can’t be offset against this
• Planting out an area wil reduce methane emissions because it wil force the stocking
rate down. However you need stock exclusions to establish planting (are they
proposing excluding stock initially then letting them back into exotics area?)
• Revenue needs to be available to fund incentives and sequestration because people
may only be able to do one or the other. If everyone is just offsetting, we won’t be
able to meet our gross reductions in methane
• Admin costs? Julie - if we can piggyback off the IRD system these wil be lower
• We don’t want to have to keep the price high to be able to fund mitigations /
sequestration
• If we have payouts for people who end up in net credit you have a mini-ETS
• ETS is cumbersome and misses a lot of sequestration. It would need to be modified.
Both HWEN and government want to use the ETS long term but would require a
rework.
• If ag successfully reduces their emissions it could damage the NZU price, as they’re
stil part of the system
• The function of the system? Is it to decarbonise agriculture?
o Julie - partnership wanted to set the price high enough to pay for R&D, pay
for uptake of mitigation and hit targets but no more. Government considers
the price itself as a driver for mitigation uptake
o Participant - is this why there’s a disconnect, because the foundations are
different? Julie - yes that’s part of it
• Farmers wil respond to price signals - if it wil benefit their business to uptake
mitigations they wil do it
• Net zero definition? Julie - We remove as much carbon as we can but some carbon
is hard to remove and has to be offset by sequestration - so not just offset but also try
to reduce. Sequestration manages the residual amounts. Cf. lubricant use in
motoring
o For methane the drivers are twofold - it’s short lived, and we are looking like
overshooting 1.5 degrees rise (in the near future), which creates pressure on
methane to drive net reductions
• A lot of people want government to openly say that they are going hard on methane
to give more time for CO2 reductions. Julie - this is a global drive
• We can’t rely on planting/sequestration - it is a short term measure, and we need to
be able to find something to get rid of our methane
• Julie - we need solutions that work on NZ farms that don’t require [treatment?] We
don’t have ‘electric cows’. Part of the issue with the equation at the moment is we
don’t have the mitigation technologies to drive reductions, and we only have two
years until pricing kicks in. A the moment destocking and trees are the only options
and both are unpalatable. So how do we manage the transition until real options are
there? The modelling has told us we need to worry about unintended impacts on
sheep and beef and deer (where there are the most limited options). How do we
manage this?
• To an extent we are already starting to make changes because costs are increasing.
Less stock therefore less methane.
• Julie - we took land into the ETS, freshwater, some of the likely technologies into
account in the modelling. Manaaki Whenua model allowed for land use change
• How we calculate land use change is crucial - there is a difference between land that
is intended to be planted and [??]
• Julie - modelling is never ‘right’ but gives us an idea of sensitivities. We know that
extensive farming systems like sheep/beef/deer are vulnerable. How do we support
the transition until there are solutions to this?
• Potential cross-sector land use support - keep the land profitable without converting it
to trees (but stil support land use change). Need to hold the community in place.
Julie cited horticulture as an option.
• For some people, the best option is to help them out of the industry (e.g. those at the
end of their working career, without other things than profit keeping them on the
land). However there are potential knock on social impacts for communities when
these people exit
• The online format makes it hard for some people to make submissions (Margie noted
there is a trade-off with ease of analysis)
• Julie noted ongoing partnership work with Govt, Ravensdown, Ngāi Tahu (others?) to
accelerate methane mitigation work. Idea is to get up to $100m investment a year,
getting it commercialised, into farmers’ hands. Suppliers want to meet the demand to
get to net zero
• Do we see an opportunity to engage NZ in total on this? Julie - it’s a good question.
We are not seeing as much ‘anti farmer’ sentiment as is perceived
• Where is the action from the rest of the country? Farming is more advanced than
others in coming up with a plan to become carbon neutral. Government are not
imposing concrete plans etc on other parts of the country.
• Julie - some areas are. Wellington electrifying public transport; government
departments have to manage their carbon emissions; switch to biofuels etc.
Document Outline
