Farms get time, but not much

Greenpeace boss Russel Norman characterises it as a middle finger extended to those marching for action on climate change in our biggest city. A Taranaki farmer, among many others, breathes a sigh of relief at the apparent extending of the hand of compromise.

Reaction to the Government’s announcement that agriculture will be allowed to create its own emissions pricing and testing regime appears to differ whether you hail from the high street or the heartland.

Like Norman, many would wonder why a sector that produces half of this country’s emissions would be allowed to avoid its share of a cost borne by others in the Emissions Trading Scheme. Especially when that cost would be about $1500 a year for the average farm, based on a 95 per cent emissions discount and a one-cent levy per kilogram of milksolids. And in the same week Fonterra lifts its forecast milk price to between $6.55 and $7.55.

But Norman and others appear to gloss over the politics and practicalities of placing too high a burden on a sector so vital to the regional and national economies, and in a country that contributes so little to global emissions. What they appear to have missed, maybe deliberately, is that, for the first time, farmers are under very real pressure to make improvements or have someone do it for them. And very soon.

There is a significant carrot that allows some autonomy in improving farm practice, through research and hard work. Maybe running a smaller herd. But make no mistake, the Government has regained the whip hand by promising to step in if the independent Climate Change Commission does not see enough progress in the next few years. And given the rising voice of those marching in our biggest cities, Jacinda Ardern is likely to use that whip.

Farmers have a great deal of work to do. And quickly. Overseer, the software many use to help manage their nutrient use and calculate emissions, is not trusted by all, and is the subject of much debate among academics and scientists; also, plans to manage impacts on land and water are not applied universally, and neither is the compliance regime administered by under-pressure regional councils.

The Government is offering support through research grants and subsidies, including the $229 million Sustainable Land Use investment, but the onus will be very much on farmers to raise their act.

There is, of course, the possibility that the electorate might tire of this coalition Government and make a turn back to the Right after a term or two. National could ignore a planned 2022 review of agriculture’s progress and simply reverse the policy.

But there is a sense, in the way farming leaders have accepted the carrot and stick, and their coordinated approach to supporting the prime minister’s announcement, that the rural sector has acknowledged the winds of commercial change.

Most of our primary produce is sold overseas, in markets even more sensitive than ours to climate change and the size of one’s carbon footprint.

Social licence is an increasingly important ingredient in global food production. Commercial reality will trump political calculation. If it hasn’t already.

Farmers will get it done. Because they have to.