Carbon footprint

So Russell Norman doesn’t like the research showing NZ dairy farmers have the lowest carbon footprint in the world, it does raise credibility issues for him when he advocates we reduce production here and break section 2.1 of the Paris Accords or outsource the deficit to less efficient producers overseas.

Although AUT research shows our sheep and beef farms are up to 90 per cent carbon neutral already before soil sequestration is counted, the Greens come up with different figures by excluding the carbon sequestered by any pre 1989 forest, ie. almost all the bush on every farm in NZ, a blatant distortion. Likewise figures they quote on the environmental cost of beef production are based on feedlot studies which have little relevance to our all grass systems, a deliberately misleading comparison. So their current campaign to villify and marginalise the farming community for climate change is based on misinformation and selective statistics, not science. So putting fake farm water exhibits in Te Papa while ignoring the regular sewage spills that close Wellington’s streets and Auckland’s beaches is another example of their bias and double standards, like their silence on the unfolding disaster of Eugenie’s megadump in the Dome Valley which we now learn will be taking toxic waste from overseas. I’m heading out now to check my traplines while the armchair environmentalists pursue their agenda.

Jon Boyd Wellsford