Owen Jennings: When Idiocy Beats Common Sense

Government policy can produce weird outcomes sometimes. We welcome foreigners coming to our country, buying up farmland, planting trees, decimating rural communities so that foreign entity can claim an offset to their Greenhouse Gas emissions. But we don’t let our own farmers use their plantings as an offset to their emissions.

Is that idiotic or what?

Take John and Jill Smith’s typical sheep and beef farm in Hawkes Bay. These are realistic numbers.

• 650 ha total area 
• 500 ha effective grazing 
• 2,500 ewes + replacements
• 180 breeding cows + replacements
• annual gross emissions 1,500 t CO₂-e 
• methane 1,100 t CO₂-e

There is another hugely important physical factor that is regularly overlooked. Sometimes inadvertently and sometimes very deliberately. The farm has gullies covered in growing native bush, it has established exotic woodlots, shelter belts, riparian plantings, that all need copious quantities of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere to grow.

A well-researched study done by Dr Bradley Case of the AUT found that 90% of that 1,100 tonnes of CO2-e would be directly offset by the vegetation growing on John and Jill’s property. Yes, suddenly there is a scientifically verified and peer reviewed basis to say that our Hawkes Bay farm has a dramatically reduced emissions’ challenge.

There is another way to measure John and Jill’s vegetation and its contribution to offsetting the animal’s emissions which ignores a significant amount of their native growth simply because it does not reach some arbitrary international sizing standard. It’s labelled the LUCAS method (Land Use and Carbon Analysis System). A tree is a tree whether it stands alone or in a cluster. It does the same sequestering job.

Now, here is where things get interesting. We have spent, in the last few years, some $500 million trying to reduce the amount of methane coming from the Smith’s sheep and beef. A big chunk of that is state funds – taxpayers investing in mitigation. That money could have removed the waiting lists in hospitals, built a whole new hospital, or helped improve education levels.

So far that expenditure has produced no suitable outcome for the Smiths to use safely that will lower that 1,100 tonnes of methane equivalents. John and Jill know if you put fibre (grass) into a gut, biology and chemistry will deliver methane every time. It is a simple, irrefutable, natural process. All that expenditure and you will only ever make minimal, marginal gains.

But what if a small amount of that $500 million had gone into assisting the Smiths to grow some more natives on their farm. Assume we taxpayers subsidised the growing of five more hectares of natives – manuka, kanuka, horopito, pittosporum. That would be enough to offset all the Smith farm’s emissions shortfall. Job done. Taxpayers saved millions. Improved environment. More bee tucker. Better aesthetics. International obligations removed.

John and Jill would happily do the planting, fencing, weed and pest control. There would be happy winners all round. Taxpayers, environmentalists, farmers.

The Smiths have another reason to be unhappy. Their farm cooperatives have been using their rebate and dividend earnings to pay for mitigation research alongside the taxpayer inputs. They have been angry because they were never consulted about these earnings being used on such a fruitless exercise. It has the hallmark of a “directors’ club” approach.

But wait there is more. The Smiths could be trebly unhappy. The nearest thing to a solution all those research funds have come up with is a bolus for cattle that lasts 3 months. They would have to round up their beef animals and wrestle a bolus down each animal’s gullet at risk to life and limb. ACC premiums are at risk.

The Smiths are warned regularly that the buyers of their produce are demanding they spend money on mitigation to “save the planet”. Why would these same customers not freak out knowing the meat was grown using methane gas inhibitors that increase ozone-depleting bromoforms and hydrogen that has a GWP100 rating of 11. It’s called ‘pollution’ swapping. In this age of consumer dominance with unresearched evidence we have no idea what the reaction will be to chunks of plastic and phials of bromoform swimming in the gut. That’s an unnecessary risk.

All of this overlooks the fact that all our livestock can only raise the temperature by four millionths of a degree each year – a hopelessly impossible amount to measure or assess potential impacts. Equally it overlooks the fact our ruminant methane emissions are steadily reducing so there is no new warming – technically our animals are cooling the planet.

As a nation utterly reliant on farming we got off on the wrong foot. And we have stayed on the wrong foot. We are now trapped in a dark alley struggling to find a way out. As one of very few countries, unsubsidised and with grass-fed ruminants we allowed extremists in science and pressure groups to dictate a regime that is now an ugly millstone.

Can you blame John and Jill for questioning our corporate sanity?

Former MP Owen Jennings, a former Member of Parliament and President of Federated Farmers, maintains a keen interest in ensuring agricultural policies are sensible and fit for purpose.