Fitzsimons: Cut cow numbers, boost profits
Governments have known about it for a long time but have done nothing. Jeanette Fitzsimons
Dairy farmers could increase their profits and reduce their methane emissions by 20 per cent at the same time, right now, according to Green Party activist and former leader Jeanette Fitzsimons.
All it would take, she told the parliamentary select committee hearing submissions in Auckland on the Zero Carbon Bill, is to reduce the dairy herd and improve feed practices.
Fitzsimons said significant progress was possible right now and recent research has suggested two types of emissions are much more dangerous than previously thought.
One is methane, the main greenhouse gas emitted by farm animals. The other is from pine trees, which make up the bulk of the Government’s 1 billion trees programme.
The committee, chaired by National MP Scott Simpson, has been meeting in Auckland and Christchurch since Thursday, and will reconvene in Wellington later this week. Fitzsimons appeared before the committee in a private capacity.
“Governments have known about it for a long time but have done nothing,” she said.
Fitzsimons said it was now known that methane is “enormously more powerful” than previously thought.
The standard thinking used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change2 was that methane trapped 13 times more heat in the atmosphere than CO , when its life is considered over 100 years.
But methane deteriorates rapidly, so a better timespan is 20 years. “When that’s applied, we can see methane is not 13 times more powerful, but 84 times. If we haven’t solved this in 20 years, it’ll be too late.”
However, she quoted research by agricultural economist Peter Fraser, formerly of Treasury, that suggested farmers could reduce the size of herds while increasing profits.
“If you feed cows better, and reduce the stock, you should be able to increase your profit and make a difference for the environment,” Fitzsimons said.
Federated Farmers senior policy adviser Richard Gardner said his organisation believed an appropriate reduction in methane would be 10 per cent by 2050.
The bill proposes 24-47 per cent.