Massive cattle cull big blow for farms
About 22,300 cattle will be culled off 22 farms infected with the disease Mycoplasma bovis in a signal that officials hope to eradicate it.
At an average cost of $1650 per milking cow, the value of the cattle would be about $36.5 million.
However, many are lesser-value calves, and when the cows are sent to meat processors, they will be worth between $800 and $1000.
At the beginning of the month, officials said $2.6m had so far been paid out to affected farmers, and projected a further $60m of liabilities. Operating costs to that date were $35m.
Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor said it would give farmers much-needed certainty over their futures.
Although the disease has been detected on 28 properties since it was first discovered in July last year, only 22 have cattle remaining on them that will need to be culled.
The properties are in Canterbury, Mid-Canterbury, South Canterbury/North Otago/Otago and Southland.
O’Connor said scientific testing and tracing had confirmed the disease was not endemic, or widespread throughout the country.
The Ministry for Primary Industries said all affected farmers would be compensated for their verifiable losses. Once their cattle were slaughtered and properties cleaned, they could start a diseasefree herd from scratch.
Federated Farmers dairy chairman Chris Lewis said it was a good move, but he felt for the farmers who would be ‘‘devastated’’.
Not only would they lose animals they felt affection for, they would also lose the genetics they had developed over years.
Rangitata MP Andrew Falloon said the news would be devastating for some, but at least it provided certainty.
‘‘I’m really pleased that MPI have made a decision today. The main thing is we don’t have to move into a management phase, so it’s vital that MPI make the cull aggressively.’’
National’s primary industries spokesman Nathan Guy said it would be a nervous period because it would be some time before those affected could restart farming.
O’Connor said the fact the disease was not widespread was critical to controlling its spread. ‘‘Everyone across New Zealand can understand how incredibly difficult it is for these farmers to lose their herds – many of these animals will be known individually.’’
MPI director response Geoff Gwyn said officials could make the decision because they were confident Mycoplasma bovis was not well established in New Zealand.
‘‘The testing of milk from every dairy farm in New Zealand is very well advanced and to date has only identified one new infected property. This, combined with MPI’s extensive surveillance work tracing every possible movement of animals from infected farms, gives us the confidence to say the disease is not widespread, but is limited to a network of farms connected by animal movements. Culling these animals is now the appropriate action.’’
Non-infected farms that are under Restricted Places Notices or Notices of Direction were not being asked to cull their herds yet because infection has not yet been confirmed on those properties. Confirmation relies on a genetic test.
There are 48 farms under Restricted Place Notices, awaiting confirmation they are either cleared or contaminated.
Gwyn said MPI would work with farmers to develop individual management plans for each of these properties – until a decision on whether to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis or move to long-term management was made.
‘‘People will say ‘why haven’t you done this already’. In fact, we have been working on this since the disease was detected and we depopulated seven farms in December.
‘‘We halted further culling until we better understood the spread of the disease. We are now at that point where we have that understanding and can complete this work with confidence,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s vital that MPI make the cull aggressively.’’ Rangitata MP Andrew Falloon
Tackling climate change is of ‘‘critical if not existential significance’’, said Government minister James Shaw while setting out measures to deal with New Zealand’s high levels of agriculture emissions.
The Minister for Climate Change yesterday announced a temporary committee would get a headstart on addressing the agriculture problem before a climate change commission was established under the forthcoming Zero Carbon Act.
He said experts and the public would be consulted on it in June and July before it was introduced to Parliament in October. He also said the Government would examine whether agriculture should be included in an emissions trading scheme.
Shaw was speaking at the opening of a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global coalition of experts who have gathered in Christchurch to discuss climate change.
The 120 scientists from 59 countries are spending the week drafting a report to inform and influence how governments deal with the problem in the decades ahead.
Opening the conference, Shaw reiterated the country’s promise to meet net zero emissions by 2050, ahead of that obliged by the Paris Agreement. Electricity would be entirely from renewable resources by 2035 at the latest, he said.
But he warned the country’s huge reliance on agriculture – which accounts for almost half of its greenhouse gases – presented a major challenge.
The emissions trading scheme, introduced a decade ago to encourage businesses to reduce pollution, had failed, Shaw said. Now being revised, it will give the chance to develop and export expertise in net-zero emissions agriculture to other countries that will face similar issues in years to come.
‘‘Given New Zealand has such significant agricultural emissions, and given we have a long history of agricultural innovation and adaptability, we need to look at the issue and look at it as quickly as possible if we want to catch the crest of that particular wave.
‘‘So we will establish an interim climate change committee to begin work on the agricultural emissions question until we’ve established the full commission under the Zero Carbon Act around the latter half of next year.’’
The committee would likely examine the possibility of levies on agricultural emissions and who should pay for them, passing its recommendations to the Climate Change Commission to follow through when it is set up next year.
Recent reports that suggested $19 billion of infrastructure was at risk of rising sea levels, that the cost of weather events to the country’s land transport network rocketed from $20 million annually to $90m over the past decade and that the drought of five years ago cost $1.5b meant we could not ‘‘afford to ignore climate change and do nothing about reducing our greenhouse gas emissions’’.
‘‘New Zealand is embarking on the kind of reform and transformation we haven’t seen for more than 30 years . . .,’’ Shaw said.
‘‘If we want to help lead the world towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, we must create a moral mandate underpinned by decisive action at home to reduce our own emissions.’’
Speaking to reporters afterwards, he said: ‘‘There’s also some really promising signs in terms of on-farm business practice and managing the economics of the farm differently, so I’m pretty confident that over the course of the coming decades we will be able to get to a position where we can grow and develop food produce in a way that’s environmentally friendly and high value.’’
Among the IPCC scientists was Professor Tim Benton, from the University of Leeds in England, a world authority on climate and food security.
‘‘The future of food systems and their relationship to climate … is really key for the future of the world economy.’’