Farms warned to cut emissions
Fraud accused seek secrecy
Four people alleged to have carried out $60 million in mortgage fraud are fighting in court to have their names kept secret. The Serious Fraud Office laid more than 100 charges under the Secret Commissions Act following an investigation into more than 70 allegedly deceptively obtained home loans. The loans ranged in value from $270,000 to $3.4m for properties in Hamilton and Auckland. The accused are a banker, lawyer, business director and a manager.
Salmon shares jump after IPO
New Zealand King Salmon shares jumped 3 cents after listing on the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges yesterday morning. The shares listed at $1.12 each, valuing the company at nearly $155 million, and rose to $1.15 shortly after listing. Nelson and Marlborough residents were given priority to $1.5m of shares. The Marlborough company would use the $30m trough from the initial public offering to repay debt, fund future investment and for working capital, chief executive Grant Rosewarne said. NZ King Salmon is the world’s largest producer of king salmon and sells salmon under three main brands: Ora King, Regal and Southern Ocean. The company has about 440 staff, 90 per cent of whom worked in the South Island.
Job advertisements rise 0.5pc
Looking for a new job? You probably had the best chance last month if you are a Bay of Plenty salesperson. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Jobs Online report for September found, across all industries and parts of the country, that the number of vacancies listed increased 0.5 per cent in the month. Compared with a year ago, there were 12.5 per cent more jobs advertised. The biggest increase was for sales roles, where there were 1.3 per cent more jobs advertised. Bay of Plenty led the charge with 2.6 per cent more jobs advertised, followed by Gisborne/Hawke’s Bay and Otago/ Southland. Canterbury and Wellington reported small falls in the number of job advertisements.
Loan fees drive complaints
Low interest rates are driving people to try to break fixed-term mortgages to get a better deal – but some are being stung by fees they did not expect in the process. The Banking Ombudsman scheme’s latest annual report shows the scheme received 2458 inquiries in the year, up 2.6 per cent on the year before. Lendingrelated concerns, particularly early repayment charges, made up 31 per cent of cases in the year, up from 28 per cent last year.
Call for credit card feedback
The Government is calling for public input into its investigation of credit card charges and will be seeking greater transparency around the fees paid by merchants. It is looking into the fees charged by banks and card companies for retail payments systems and whether the charges may be rorting New Zealand retailers, unfairly adding millions of dollars to business costs. Minister for Consumer Affairs Paul Goldsmith said it was a ‘‘fine line’’ but the Government did not want Kiwis excessively charged. Concerns had been expressed about the cost of credit card payment fees in New Zealand, particularly in comparison with Australia, and in the context of a decline in the use of eftpos. There is no single silver bullet that will cut New Zealand’s farming emissions, but a number of measures could slow the country’s contribution to climate warming, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment says.
‘‘Just because there are difficulties does not mean that nothing can be, or should be, done,’’ Dr Jan Wright said in releasing the report, Climate Change and Agriculture: Understanding the Biological Greenhouse Gases.
The report is in the main explanatory and makes no recommendations in relation to targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or the functioning of the emissions trading scheme (ETS).
It points out New Zealand is in an unusual position, because 43 per cent of its greenhouse gases are caused by methane and 11 per cent by nitrous oxide, the first generated by all livestock, the latter mainly by cows urinating.
However, Wright warns that if farming does not begin to take responsibility for these gases ‘‘other sectors (and taxpayers) will become increasingly squeezed’’.
Federated Farmers president William Rolleston welcomed the report, saying the best thing farmers could do was what they had been doing over the past two decades – improving their carbon efficiency by 1.2 per cent a year.
The recent Paris agreement on climate change said there needed to be work on avoiding climate change, but that should not undermine food production, he said.
Wright said there had been a number of false starts in dealing with agricultural greenhouse gases, and much controversy over their omission from the ETS.
‘‘But the ETS is not the only way forward – there are other things that can be done.’’
She suggested farms could be made to monitor and report on their biological emissions now. Some larger farms could be brought within the ETS because the compliance costs would be relatively low.
Rolleston said it would be difficult to accurately measure the emissions of animals, and the measurements would only be an approximation.
Wright outlines and evaluates the technological fixes that are being worked on by New Zealand scientists:
A vaccine that will inhibit methane by 20 per cent is the most promising fix, and she recommends investment into its development be ramped up;
A methane inhibitor or chemical compound fed to animals. This would be administered as a slow release tablet;
Breeding low emission cattle and sheep. Selective breeding could reduce methane emissions from animals by 10 per cent to 20 per cent without harming production;
Low emission animal feeds are being developed but the impact at a national level would be small. Farmers could be encouraged to change their management practices. One way might be to reduce stock numbers and still increase profitability. This was proven to be possible in a Waikato case study where a farmer cut cow numbers from 530 to 350 over five years.
Changes to feeds, fertiliser application, stocking rates, the use of feed pads and forest planting will also help reduce emissions.
Planting trees would help offset emissions. This could be done either by encouraging landowners to allow native forest to regenerate, or grow plantations.
If 1 million hectares of marginal land was left to re-establish in natives, it would capture the equivalent of about 17 per cent of methane and nitrous oxide emissions currently emitted each year for 50 years.
Rolleston agreed farmers could be given better incentives to plant forests. For example, they cannot obtain carbon credits on riparian or shelter belt planting.
Wright warned change was inevitable. ‘‘Our farmers have shown time and again their ability to adapt to new challenges … In the long term the way in which food is grown, and the types of food grown, will have to change if biological emissions are to be reduced.’’