NZ farmers worry about ‘carbon leakage’ if they have to pay for emissions, but they could benefit from playing the long game
Published: April 12, 2023 5.29am AEST
Anita WrefordProfessor Applied Economics, Lincoln University, New Zealand John Tobias SaundersResearch Officer, Lincoln University, New Zealand Meike GuentherResearch Officer, Lincoln University, New Zealand
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New Zealand is indeed the first country to investigate introducing a price on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
New Zealand – dubbed the Saudi Arabia of milk for its dominant role in global dairy trade – wants its farmers to pay a world-first levy on agricultural emissions by 2025 to help reduce agriculture's climate footprint. https://t.co/JS4Qm4YyEU
The most recent pricing proposals would require farmers to pay a levy on their agricultural emissions. To begin with, only 5% of emissions would be priced, with proposals to reduce the 95% free allocation gradually over time.
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But Aotearoa is already one of the most efficient producers of meat and dairy products globally. If we reduce emissions here, will that not simply lead to other, less efficient countries picking up the lost production, while our farmers pay the price?
This idea is known as “carbon leakage” and is often used as an argument against any domestic policy that could result in reduced agricultural production. The issue is important as New Zealand depends heavily on agricultural exports. In 2022, of all merchandise trade, 65% were agricultural commodities.
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This shows leakage may occur, with reductions in production of New Zealand dairy products. But global meat and dairy production by 2050 would be considerably lower than without the policy, which would have a positive overall impact on the climate.
What can I say – socialists, green or otherwise. Always the disdain for farmers – impoverishing and wrecking agri-businesses because it serves some higher social goal, like forcing more collectivisation on the Kulaks, or because making food production more difficult has “a positive overall impact on the climate”.
They always find a way to mess up food production.
There is nothing inevitable about us all switching to vegetable based diets.
A mass vegetarian diet would be a death sentence for millions of people. Many people, including myself, have metabolisms which cannot cope with carbohydrates and vegetable rich diets, we have to eat lots of meat. Only by switching to a very protein rich diet have I been able to control my weight and restore my health. I’m not alone – my doctor and my friends put me on to the diet, with the advice “meat is your friend”.
So what will happen to New Zealand if meat production is shut down by carbon taxes?
I would like to say they would simply import meat, but importing meat implies a functioning export economy, to earn the foreign currency required to pay for the imported meat. All New Zealand export businesses are being impacted by this carbon tax madness.
If this anti-business climate insanity continues, pretty soon New Zealand’s only remaining viable foreign currency income will be from high margin businesses, like offshore IT services, or offering sex tours to rich Asians. And even those economic activities will suffer the crushing impact of New Zealand’s new carbon taxes.
There is no reason to lower CO2 emissions. CO2 is not the control knob for earth’s climate, the earth is not in a climate crisis, the earth is not going to reach a tipping point and over heat. Never allow a mindless politician, bureaucrat or administrator to dictate how you earn your living. They know nothing and damn sure not as much as the farmers or producers they are trying to boss around. Tell them to take a hike in no uncertain terms.
”The research is based on the recommended consumption of six kilos of red meat per person per year in line with the Global Burden of Disease calculations, while the Dutch eat an average of 30 kilos. The amount of money needed to offset the additional care costs would be the equivalent of €7.50 per kilo. The issue of a tax on meat is a sensitive one in political circles but has been suggested as a way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions because livestock farming is highly polluting. Two of the four coalition parties are, however, opposed to such a tax.”
Yeah, Sheep and grass are wonderful things…. especially Lamb and Mutton from New Zealand.
Duker
April 11, 2023 11:49 pm
The biggest effect on nz dairy farmers would be a fall in land prices, as they are boosted by high milk prices. Many farmers don’t even ‘farm’ such is the riches , they use a system called share milking where those with no land operate the farm by owning the cows and doing the actual farming.
Those who own the land sole aim in life is to buy another farm and repeat the process.
Cut the cash flow by paying the CO2 – which will still be paid by taxpayers like they have have since Kyoto- and land prices funded by debt will fall instead.
It’s another story completely why even farming which operates on sun, grass and water is even treated as a CO2 emitter . That carbon comes from the air not fossils
High land prices are a symptom of New Zealand inflation running red hot, its an asset bubble – 7% inflation is pretty special. An increase in interest rates might force some land owners to de-leverage. But forcing up cost of doing business won’t help anyone, it’s more likely to crash the industry.
High farm prices predate the inflation. By many decades . Many farms were converted since the 2000s from sheep grazing to dairying – with high capital costs as its not just a matter of bringing in cows- to take part in the ‘white gold rush’
Its the milk price that decides . When it falls as it did a decade back the farm price crashed as well, as the dairy farmers are highly indebted
Just more crap from the Duker.
How do you come to think that exports are bad .
Where would the overseas exchange come from to purchase all things like motor vehicles ,TV sets specialist medicines and the thousands of goods that are simply too costly to produce in a country of 5 million people .
We do export some farm machinery and a certain amount of specialized timber products but our non farm manufactured products are a very small proportion of our exports .
Timber and pine logs are somewhere around 25% of exports and iron ore from iron sands is the largest export by tonnage from Taharoa on the west coast of the North Island .
Fruit wine and fish are quite large exports but agricultural exports still make up over 70% of New Zealands exports and that means New Zealands wealth to trade with the world .
I believe they’re targeting methane emissions, not CO2.
Targeting methane is calculated to attack fracking and meat eating.
The warmunists attack fracking because it undercuts their goal of destroying capitalism. Their vegan loon anti-humanist allies are pushing this bs because it advances their war against meat.
”The organisation also wants to update language in the classroom so that teachers say ‘good morning everyone’, rather than ‘good morning boys and girls’,”
This is a stupid study , probably funded by anti meat and anti farming zealots .
These university studies are paid to “prove ” any thing that the payers want .
All populations around the world are living much longer than even 50 years ago so if this study was even half right this would not be the case .
The majority of my friends are farmers and all over 80 years old and all have eaten plenty of red meat and still do without any problems showing up .
Maybe the problem could be alcohol or just to much of a sedentary life style .
We all keep fit and most of us all play bridge to keep our brains working .
We all worked long hours, 60+ hours per week,shearing sheep ,driving tractors ,trucks and combine harvesters and milking cows and all the other farm tasks.
Yes, and I’ve made the case that even if the whole world signs onto the Global Methane Pledge, and we reduce fugitive emissions from fossil fuels by 30%, it will only amount to about 0.02 PPMv/yr CO2-equivalent reduction in methane. That is less than the margin of error in the Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 measurements. It would appear that NZ has visions of grandeur, and wants the title of “The Mouse that Roared.” https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
Right on the target Clyde.
Destroy your farming which is the life blood of the country and replace it with fairy dust .
This is what this green infested socialist government is aiming for so they look good in the eyes of the UN..
What about carbon farming some will ask .How many people will be fed with carbon farming and how can sending carbon credits overseas earn any thing for New Zealanders ?
You have not got a clue about what you are talking about Duker .
You have verbal diarrhea .
Your last sentence makes sense but you have got it back to front in your first two paragraphs.
Yes there is share milking which has worked well for over 100 years in New Zealand .
Most successful dairy farmers got their initial start to farm ownership through share milking .
Moving up from farm manager to lower order share milker now getting a percentage between 25% to 30%of the milk cheque ( this was how I got a start in 1963) they then save enough to buy a small herd then move to a larger farm and herd ,saving for a deposit to buy land for them selves .
We were called cow cokkys back then .We worked far longer hours than the any one works now.
Methane from farm animals is a closed cycle as not one atom of carbon is added to the atmosphere .This was a scam thought up by activists at the Kyoto climate accord .
What carbon tax are the taxpayers paying on behalf of farmers and where is the money going to? There is no carbon tax being sent overseas YET,
This green infested socialist government here in New Zealand wants to cripple our economy by being the first country in the world to TAX methane emissions from farmed animals and nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer and urine .
New Zealand feeds 30 million people around the world so if there was a problem why should they not pay an emission tax on their food ?
Im just pointing out the system of 50% going to the farm owner , who doesnt lift a finger while the sharemilker owns the cows and runs the farm ( often the sharemilker sub contracts the twice daily milking to others) is all possible because of the high returns and capital growth from ‘white gold as its half seriously called.
A farmer owned cooperative which takes all the product whether they want to or not is agrarian socialism.
Guess who signed the 2016 Paris climate treaty as well, the National government and every MP voted for the Zero Carbon act to make its provisions the law of the land ( including each farmer to ‘contribute’ a tiny % of the Carbon emissions)
Duker – doesn’t look like you know much about farming in NZ. From your writings, Grahams cars are definitely smarter than you.
The farmer owned co-op (I gather you mean Fonterra) doesn’t take all the milk nor is it anything like socialism. Even Wikipedia recognises that. There are a lot of other dairy companies. The tanker signs at farm gates around here indicate there are three companies that the milk goes to. There are also large deer, sheep and goat milking herds about 15-30km away from here. whose produce mainly goes to cheese and specialty milk factories.
The farm owner in a 50/50 sharemilking has to pay a lot of the costs – fertiliser rates etc. Every kg of milk solids is supposed to take a kg of fertiliser. Sharemilking Agreements | Bramwell Bate
As Graham pointed out that is the way farmers get “promoted” and most of those owners were sharemilkers.
The issue is more the corporate owners who have on managers or lower order sharemilkers. But they are pure capitalists.
If cows are allowed ‘free range’ they work as carbon capture devices.
It’s because they are very fussy eaters – they like to eat only sugar.
They know that when confronted by a field of grass, the sugar is to be found in the leaves of the grasses = where the plants absorb CO2, sunlight & water.
Cows have adapted their ‘mouthparts’ ## so as to selectively harvest only the green, growing, juicy, sugar-filled and nutrient rich leaves, leaving the stalks and seed-heads behind.
They ‘know’ that the stalks are simply sugar-free indigestible cellulose. It has no interest to them
## If you have ever allowed yourself to be ‘kissed’ by a cow (they are very affectionate), you will realise what I mean there.
They do ‘French Kissing’ and their tongues have got to be The Roughest Hardest Most Abrasive Thing you ever met.
(They are trying to lick the salt off your skin – they use it to maintain pH 7 in their stomachs – there is method in their (affection) madness)
For the cows it has All The Benefits.
They get nutrient rich food with as much bang-per-buck as possibleThey don’t get bellies full of ‘fibre’ which sucks nutrients out of them, gives them belly-ache, causes them to poo a lot and makes them gassy. (Makes them burp)For Gaia and Ma Nature, the cows have great big paddling feet and these work to pummel the denuded stalks of grass into the top layer of the soil.
They obviously do still consume a lot of fibre and we all know the result = Cow Pies
Three benefits there:
The grass to throws up some new leaves for the cows to eatThe cellulosic stalks feed the soil.Cow pies further help to bury the old denuded grass-stalks but especially encourage bugs, beetles, worms. They process the pies, the cellulose, the soil and they retain micro nutrients and trace elements
NOT the soil bacteria, cellulose feeds the fungi. They do the initial processing and feed the bacteria which then process the soil and feed the grass.
The cellulose retains moisture and builds soil structure, allowing it to drain freely but also to retain a lot of water and also the water soluble nutrients the grasses need and use. Notably Nitrogen.
And all that makes for = Nice Climate
Proper Free Range Grass Fed Cows have got to be the best thing that could ever have happened, both to us and to Planet Earth:
They build soilThey properly capture, store and recycle Carbon and nutrientsThey control the climate via the water trapped in that CarbonThey turn sugar (toxic to us) into the very thing we are supposed to eat, Saturated Fat
Yet now they are totally demonised because of the most contrived and ass-over-tit piece of scientific garbage there could ever be.
i.e That the atmosphere ‘warms Earth’ when it fact it is an immense cooling machine
This world has gone completely mad
suicidally so
PS Rud is ‘a cow farmer’ – he will back up every word I have said here
PPS: Why do bullet points disintegrate when you do an edit?
I was looking forward to my breakfast, right up to the point when I read this comment, Peta.
Guess I’ll just have to hope that those images of cow eating habits have dissipated by lunchtime.
Chris Nisbet
April 12, 2023 12:25 am
In addition to the carbon taxes there’s a drive to reduce nitrates going into the rivers and waterways as well. One News here in NZ showed us a story tonight about how fresh water was being polluted by nitrates, and some expert told us all that farmers had to reduce their herds to combat this.
I wonder if the situation will become similar to what the farmers in the Netherlands are dealing with.
Yes . That’s a real problem compared to the ‘sustainably’ produced CO2 and methane the cows produce. A hidden factor is the PK a major non grass food supplement , also better known as palm kernel, yes those palms planted for their oil and the kernels
The real issue is the price of land , more cows and more supplements to produce more milk , which is processed by the farmers socialist cooperative Fonterra. Yes it’s the same price for it’s farmers no matter how far away they are from the plant or whether they need the milk or not, as the coop has to take what ever the farmer produces.
Reduce the land price by normal means and the farmers can live happily and debt fund the land and the share milkers can debt fund the cows
No its a real problem. Im surprised you are using meaningless tropes as a rebuttal. Like overfishing killed the fishing , over farming is killing the waterways and asking farmers is pointless as they keep saying – ‘we need more research’, again again for more than 20 years . The research has been done, they just dont like the answer.
Some districts have restricted dairy farming because of the high nitrate load ( dairy cows especially drink a lot of water) that is poisoning some of the major lakes.
You should consult a doctor,Duker as you have contracted verbal diarrhea from to close a contact with the greens .
PKE stands for palm kernel expeller which is what is left after the palm oil is extracted and it is a waste product that was either burnt or pushed into the sea.
It is exported around the world for cattle fodder and is a good feed during droughts and dry times to help supplement the dry pasture .
This line that you have written above is straight out of the greens playbook as they blamed New Zealand farmers for the destruction of forests in Indonesia .
If anyone is to blame it is all the people who use the products that contain palm oil.
You are spouting absolute crap about Fonterra as you are ignorant of how Fonterra came about.
The government of the day encouraged The New Zealand Dairy Company and the Kiwi Dairy company to combine with the assets of the New Zealand Dairy board as there was no longer any need for that government layer of bureaucracy.
This is where you fell in the cow poo over your head Duker .
The government made the rule that the newly formed company had to pick up any and all milk offered as a condition of handing back the dairy boards assets to a farmers run cooperative .
I am a foundation shareholder of Fonterra so I know what I am talking about.
I have attended many shareholders meetings and the subject of charging for the cartage of milk has never been raised .
And it never will as we are a cooperative company not a bloody socialist like you duker. .
old cocky
April 12, 2023 12:25 am
global meat and dairy production by 2050 would be considerably lower than without the policy
O-kay.
So, how is the food currently produced by grazing herbivores going to be replaced?
Other sources of income. 65% of their export income comes from agriculture + a lot of pretty awesome food. When they blow up agriculture, well they also have some of the most liberal prostitution laws of any Western country. I’m hope for New Zealand’s sake they vote out the current clowns, before their desperate kids start aspiring to big money jobs entertaining rich foreigners, like they do in Thailand.
That is just nonsense. Most of NZ’s dairy farmers sell their milk to Fonterra which sells mostly milk powder for about $7 a kilo. In contrast in my local supermarket Parmesan for examples sells for over a $100 a kilo. Sell milk powder is a race to the bottom since all milk powder is essentially the same. If NZ farmers sold premium products rather than milk powder they could make a lot more money from fewer cows reducing pollution from nitrates and methane and requiring less time working. It would be a win-win situation for everyone.
Ah so your plan to help farmers climb the value chain is to punish them with taxes until they get it right? The beatings will continue until morale improves?
The dairy farmers dont pay any taxes anyway , as the business model is to keep buying land – loaded with debt- rather than make cash profits from farming that are taxable
The largest company – farmer owned Fonterra pays zero corporate tax – and gets a major tax refund of $250 mill- this is $20 bill per year revenue company- because the system of GST/VAT refunds for exports.
Yes thats right they get tax refunds and have for decades
You should be arrested for spreading disinformation Duker.
It is time you were banned for spreading lies .
.Fonterra is a cooperative company which is owned by the supplying share holders .
A milk price is set at the start of the season but may vary up or down .
Fonterra then pays out a dividend from the manufacture of certain niche products and on any overseas investments.
The dividend is paid direct to farmers and it is then counted as their income along with their monthly milk payments .
Yes Fonterra does not pay much tax because it is a cooperative so all income is paid to the shareholders .
I don’t know were you get that rubbish from but have you seen how much banks are charging on mortgages now 8 to 9 percent interest. .You cant buy much of a farm for $3million so if you had a million deposit you would be paying around $170.000 interest a year .
As Graham pointed out, you are just a liar Duker and not even a good one.. Here is the latest annual report showing they paid significant corporate tax Fonterra Announces FY22 Annual Results
Dairy products is highly restricted acess to most high consuming western countries. NZs own market is small
So its fanciful to suggest the high volume producer like Fonterra can make that investment without market acess.
US Canada , Europe all love ‘Free Trade’ but slam the door when it comes to agriculture and especially dairy products.
Its like saying to US wheat or soya beans etc farmers , ‘move up the value chain’ . Its just a buzz phrase with no practical effect
You to should consult a doctor I Walton as you have caught some sort of disease off the greens.
If you lived anywhere out in the country you would see the 100s of milk tankers fetching the milk from the farms .
During the spring so much milk arrives every day that the company has to process it within 24 hours .A lot of milk is skimmed with the cream churned into butter and AMF Anhydrous milk fat..The skim milk is then dried into skim milk powder.The quickest way to handle the massive volume is to dry it into whole milk powder
A lot of cheese is manufactured and a large amount of milk is sold on the local market
A lot of special products are manufactured such as UHT milk and cream and specialty cheeses .
There is only so much market for specialty products and over supply would soon crash the premium prices .
How many kilos of Parmesan did you buy this week ?
Have you ever been past Litchfield Izaak? What do you think is in those massive towers? Cheese.What about Reporoa – whey alcohol.
You are as ignorant as Duker and that is a very low bar.
The rural supporting National party VOTED unanimously for the Zero Carbon Act to legally implement the Paris Treaty climate rules.
30% reduction by 2030 said the the National Party PM
There is no ‘voting out’ when its 99% of the parliament voted for it
The tax system gives them huge advantages and refunds. Treat them the same as others and stop the taxpayers funding their carbon costs.
Thats what its about , The carbon taxes are there – have been since the Kyoto treaty in 1999 was signed- just tthe taxpayers have paid it nad the farmers want it to continue.
Up to the 1970s the country ran a EU style subsidised framing system where direct payments went for per head of sheep or cattle, buying up surpluses when prices were low .
So those Dutch farmers seem to have forgotten who is the hand feeding them with the massive EU subsidies
More lies and now more lies from the DuKer.
Farmers pay exactly the same carbon taxes as every one else in New Zealand which at the moment are added to all fuel sales.
Grassland farmers actually se-quest soil carbon as the top soil builds up with the dung from the animals .
It can be measured but the boffins in charge cant or don’t and most probably won’t measure the build up from year to year as it would destroy their hold over the population .
This is exactly their attitude to measuring the carbon sequestration of farm plantings around rivers and creeks and our native (bush) forest even if these bush blocks are registered in the Queen Elizabeth Trust to be protected for eternity .
I do not earn one carbon credit for the bush blocks on my farm registered in the QE2 trust .
The trouble with you Duker is that YOU have forgotten who is the hand feeding you .
The New Zealand farmers not only feed you but they provide 70% of New Zealands foreign exchange .
Just think a little before writing crap on this site .
Andy
April 12, 2023 1:23 am
Amazing how increased taxes makes everything groovy for the environment.
Politicians will support any harebrained scheme that leads to more government revenue and more spending that they control to buy votes and skim off into their offshore bank accounts.
The Climate Change ™ scam is a witches’ brew of warmunist true believers, anti-human vegans, power-hungry politicians, crony capitalist greenwashers, and careerist pseudoscientists, all independently pursuing their personal interests at the expense of the general public. No conspiracy is needed for all these miscreants to harm society.
I’m not sure about that. Either they think that more taxes always means more revenue, or they want something else other than just revenue.
RockyJ
April 12, 2023 1:51 am
Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, was hit by a damaging cyclone two months ago. Our government institution for climate monitoring and research, the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) claimed in the msm that there is an increasing pattern of these events, unprecedented and a sign of the climate crisis. They based this on comparison with their official record of storm events in the late 19th century.
An independent researcher, Ian Wishart, studied the historical record of storm events in the late 19th century. He found that they had missed a significant number of large damaging storms from their data.
At least New Zealand doesn’t have George Moonbat Monbiot
“Guardian columnist George Monbiot came to live in Mid Wales a while ago. We can’t have made him feel very welcome, as he has been campaigning non-stop against our sheep-farming way of life ever since. He is fond of referring to sheep as ‘woolly maggots‘. He has described Britain’s countryside as being ‘sheep-wrecked‘. He has complained that the landscape of Dartmoor has been ‘comprehensively shagged’ by the ‘white plague’. I am tempted to ask: ‘Are you okay, George?’”
Or the Goldsmith brothers – Zac and Ben
“[Ben Goldsmith] declared in the Mail on Sunday last month that if we are to save Britain, we have to stop farming sheep. In Goldsmith’s telling, it would appear that everything is the fault of sheep. Global warming? Sheep. The extinction of native species? Sheep again. Flooding? Their hoof prints are all over it.”
We don’t need a Moonbat when we have a Green party in government with even sillier ideas.
David Wolcott
April 12, 2023 3:05 am
Hey come on. We’re phasing out smoking, Ardern has a new job policing our thoughts, and we beat up anyone who wants to give a public talk. Who wouldn’t want to come here and eat over-priced meat?
It won’t be long until straight women in New Zealand have to wear drag queen makeup to walk the streets, to avoid being attacked by men in dresses, kind of like a woke version of a burka.
Right-Handed Shark
April 12, 2023 4:49 am
Methane has exactly zero affect on climate, as it’s LWIR spectrum is entirely covered by that of water vapour. Atmospheric methane = ~1.8ppm, whereas water vapour is variable, but usually between 20,000-40,000 ppm. I personally don’t know any NZ farmers, but if you do, please make them aware of these facts.
Dodgy Geezer
April 12, 2023 5:53 am
What are the ‘carbon costs ‘ of sex tours? Enquiring minds would like to know…..
Joseph Zorzin
April 12, 2023 6:13 am
What can I say – socialists, green or otherwise. Always the disdain for farmers – impoverishing and wrecking agri-businesses because it serves some higher social goal, like forcing more collectivisation on the Kulaks, or because making food production more difficult has “a positive overall impact on the climate”.
Same holds for forestry. The climatistas want to stop forestry- to lock up the forests to do nothing but sequester carbon. They don’t seem to understand where wood comes from for homes, furniture and paper products like toilet paper! This new forestry hating movement is called PROFORESTATION.
Tom Halla
April 12, 2023 7:03 am
Hitler was a vegetarian. Heinrich Himmler was a particular fan of biodynamic agriculture, the origin of organic farming.
Mad notions keep getting recycled. Lysenko lives!
Let’s not disparage the crunchy con’s in WUWT with Nazi invoked ad hominins. All of the bath water is worth tossing but not the baby.
Organic farming is old. Modern ag is new. The human race flourished farming and feeding itself.
I get it that modern ag feeds the world. It is a very wonderful thing!
But people can also feed themselves at least in part from their own land. Organics works on a small scale and it’s cheaper with far less pit falls than modern ag procedures. No reason to pit the old against the new.
There is a distinction between the old and the new, but it does not need to be separated either by the left or the right.
It is the Utopian dream of some is that the human population would be revert to 16 c. levels and be restored to small agrarian communities doing it the old way.
Nice idea maybe but think of the heinousness process of getting there. Sure insanity. Yet, there is no reason why people can’t live alternative lifestyles because they like that sort of thing…. like myself.
Organics only works for about seven years. Then all the phosphate and other fertilisers put on by earlier farmers has run out. Of course, animals are probably dead before then from lack of cobalt and selenium which many soils rare deficient in.
All those beef and sheep bones….. great source of phosphate and Nitrogen. Now a days bones are expensive because of the bone broth demand…. Ramen and other bone broth niches. But even after the bones have been boiled, they can be milled for as a phosphate and nitrogen applications. They are absorbed slower than super phosphate and you don’t have to worry about careful titrations. Too much phosphates makes stuff taste terrible.
The Mennonite farmer in my local community use bones, manure, pig fecal elixir…foul stuff. Why sell that stuff when you can process and use it yourself at a higher profit. These guys now how to work and work it to make a buck. Again we’re not taking 100,000 acre industrial wheat farms in Alberta. But the PA Mennonite farmer is a very efficient capitalist…. they waste nothing and the work like dignified little freight trains….something that is lost on the rest of us…..
Distinction without separation. Organics and modern ag. No reason to pit one against the other. Obviously, organics is not a solution for feeding the world in large scale industrial farming…maybe in some instances it is but mostly it is not for wide variety of reasons….cost being the highest. Economics of scale makes organics very onerous.
(we live in a political age online were we tend separate every thing into nice neat opposing categories… no need for it.)
I know Organics is being touted as a solution by the radical environmentalist’s and to do so is flirting with famine…because the world is fed from very highly concentrated and massive economics of scale due to a missive culture shift since WWII. We cannot expect to shift back but people if they want to should be allowed to…..they should be provided regulatory gates to walk right into subsistence/commercial farming on a small scale.
The family next door has 4 acres and provides us goat meat and milk. I provide them produce and fruit….. this works as long as the nut job tax gluttons don’t get in the middle of it.
On the other hand organic farming on a small scale works just fine. Bone meal is a thing especially if you raise chickens or goats or whatever which makes it cheaper than buying Super Phosphate. Potassium is in common wood ash….cheap and can be used sparingly. I grew 6 tons of produce on one acre… the same acre in the city of Philadelphia for over a 6 year for local markets…. until it was clear it was time to leave Philly.
Now I just do small scale subsistence farming for my family very cheaply and organically not because I love organics but because it’s simple and I use my own resources for fertilizer and compost because it’s cheaper. i don’t need herbicides or pesticides other than Kaolin clay (inert). for the allium fly.
So I produce 40% of my food budget. This is so I don’t have to spend my salary dollar which I almost have to earn two to spend one and I ‘d rather do the manual labor that g to planet fitness. and I love my gardens and orchards..
I am a big capitalist. I love market competition. 30 million families doing what I am doing would force the food industry to up their game a bit in terms of quality and prices. Just like the Micro brewing market did to the industrial brewers in the past 35 years. It’s never going to happen but the numbers work.
I get it… I love industrial beer Yuengling and I love my home grown scratch beer as well… no need to pit one against the other.
Good to see you actually walk the talk JC. And that you recognise that what works on a small scale cannot feed the populations of cities. Now convince the idiots who promote it as the answer how stupid they are.
JC
April 12, 2023 9:25 am
It’s an extremely-normal sunny April 12th day in New Zealand 2055 but “where is the beef and mutton?”! Only thing for dinner is porridge-meat made in factory in Alberta Canada….if you’re lucky.
JC
April 12, 2023 1:36 pm
There was a time that Ireland, Australia, New Zealand were crawling with sheep grazing vast stretches of marginal lands (not suitable for normal grain farming). lamb and Mutton were plentiful and affordable for the masses. The same was true in the US until the 1970s, when cattle in fields were a common site all over the country…that is .when beef was plentiful and affordable to the masses. Not sure if the centralization of commodities markets wrecked all of it or that global demand increased with prosperity. If that is the case, then local people have to work local lands to produce meat in local markets for themselves to compete with the larger markets.. It’s already happening in PA to a small degree. The big boys will just pass on the increased regulatory costs and taxes to the consumer and produce less in de-facto colluded markets. Put a regulatory/tax bite on local people growing local meat, it will trigger a big political black lash like it did in the Netherlands.
Merino is awesome. My wife spins her own yarn and weaves and knits. We buy fleeces from a guy down the road. Wool is far better than any of it’s alternatives. I am still wearing sweaters all winter long every year sweaters my mother knitted from Shetland wool from Scotland in 1974 and still use the same blankets…. my grandchildren will be using them.
I am assuming that the beef and mutton/lamb produced in NZ is grass feed not food lot fed. Land prices have gone through the roof in the US making grass grazing very expensive. In Pennsylvania, where I live, there are plenty of hill sides for grazing but most people are too lazy to or two affluent to even think about it.
The majority of New Zealands sheep are farmed on hills and mountains .
There were 70 million ewes 30 years ago but now less than half of that number .
Our dairy cow numbers have increased over the last 30 years simply because of economics .
Many different fruits are being grown on a commercial scale for export and the areas are expanding every year .
Kiwi fruit ,apples ,citrous ,cherries,and many others are exported around the world Our wine exports to the world are also expanding..
Hawks Bay which has been devastated by a tropical cyclone normally exports well over 30 thousand shipping containers of apples each year from the port of Napier.
There is no reason to lower CO2 emissions. CO2 is not the control knob for earth’s climate, the earth is not in a climate crisis, the earth is not going to reach a tipping point and over heat. Never allow a mindless politician, bureaucrat or administrator to dictate how you earn your living. They know nothing and damn sure not as much as the farmers or producers they are trying to boss around. Tell them to take a hike in no uncertain terms.
Once upon a time the mice held a meeting and decided to hang a bell on the cat.
Who will bell the cat?
Archibald Douglas will
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Douglas,_5th_Earl_of_Angus
I’m sure that requires a working time machine…
People eating meat are eating plants. They have just been preprocessed to make them palatable.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2023/04/meat-tax-would-boost-health-and-cut-heathcare-spending-research/
”The research is based on the recommended consumption of six kilos of red meat per person per year in line with the Global Burden of Disease calculations, while the Dutch eat an average of 30 kilos. The amount of money needed to offset the additional care costs would be the equivalent of €7.50 per kilo. The issue of a tax on meat is a sensitive one in political circles but has been suggested as a way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions because livestock farming is highly polluting. Two of the four coalition parties are, however, opposed to such a tax.”
Yeah, Sheep and grass are wonderful things…. especially Lamb and Mutton from New Zealand.
The biggest effect on nz dairy farmers would be a fall in land prices, as they are boosted by high milk prices. Many farmers don’t even ‘farm’ such is the riches , they use a system called share milking where those with no land operate the farm by owning the cows and doing the actual farming.
Those who own the land sole aim in life is to buy another farm and repeat the process.
Cut the cash flow by paying the CO2 – which will still be paid by taxpayers like they have have since Kyoto- and land prices funded by debt will fall instead.
It’s another story completely why even farming which operates on sun, grass and water is even treated as a CO2 emitter . That carbon comes from the air not fossils
High land prices are a symptom of New Zealand inflation running red hot, its an asset bubble – 7% inflation is pretty special. An increase in interest rates might force some land owners to de-leverage. But forcing up cost of doing business won’t help anyone, it’s more likely to crash the industry.
High farm prices predate the inflation. By many decades . Many farms were converted since the 2000s from sheep grazing to dairying – with high capital costs as its not just a matter of bringing in cows- to take part in the ‘white gold rush’
Its the milk price that decides . When it falls as it did a decade back the farm price crashed as well, as the dairy farmers are highly indebted
Just more crap from the Duker.
How do you come to think that exports are bad .
Where would the overseas exchange come from to purchase all things like motor vehicles ,TV sets specialist medicines and the thousands of goods that are simply too costly to produce in a country of 5 million people .
We do export some farm machinery and a certain amount of specialized timber products but our non farm manufactured products are a very small proportion of our exports .
Timber and pine logs are somewhere around 25% of exports and iron ore from iron sands is the largest export by tonnage from Taharoa on the west coast of the North Island .
Fruit wine and fish are quite large exports but agricultural exports still make up over 70% of New Zealands exports and that means New Zealands wealth to trade with the world .
I believe they’re targeting methane emissions, not CO2.
Targeting methane is calculated to attack fracking and meat eating.
The warmunists attack fracking because it undercuts their goal of destroying capitalism. Their vegan loon anti-humanist allies are pushing this bs because it advances their war against meat.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2023/04/meat-tax-would-boost-health-and-cut-heathcare-spending-research/
No matter how many times you post this link, it’s still abject nonsense.
I know. The West has become a nonsensical world.
from the same ‘news paper’.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2023/04/end-divisive-language-in-education-school-pupils-union-says/
”The organisation also wants to update language in the classroom so that teachers say ‘good morning everyone’, rather than ‘good morning boys and girls’,”
good morning every gender
This is a stupid study , probably funded by anti meat and anti farming zealots .
These university studies are paid to “prove ” any thing that the payers want .
All populations around the world are living much longer than even 50 years ago so if this study was even half right this would not be the case .
The majority of my friends are farmers and all over 80 years old and all have eaten plenty of red meat and still do without any problems showing up .
Maybe the problem could be alcohol or just to much of a sedentary life style .
We all keep fit and most of us all play bridge to keep our brains working .
We all worked long hours, 60+ hours per week,shearing sheep ,driving tractors ,trucks and combine harvesters and milking cows and all the other farm tasks.
Yes, we are the carbon they wish to eliminate.
and rice, but that tends not to be mentioned.
Yes, and I’ve made the case that even if the whole world signs onto the Global Methane Pledge, and we reduce fugitive emissions from fossil fuels by 30%, it will only amount to about 0.02 PPMv/yr CO2-equivalent reduction in methane. That is less than the margin of error in the Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 measurements. It would appear that NZ has visions of grandeur, and wants the title of “The Mouse that Roared.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
Right on the target Clyde.
Destroy your farming which is the life blood of the country and replace it with fairy dust .
This is what this green infested socialist government is aiming for so they look good in the eyes of the UN..
What about carbon farming some will ask .How many people will be fed with carbon farming and how can sending carbon credits overseas earn any thing for New Zealanders ?
You have not got a clue about what you are talking about Duker .
You have verbal diarrhea .
Your last sentence makes sense but you have got it back to front in your first two paragraphs.
Yes there is share milking which has worked well for over 100 years in New Zealand .
Most successful dairy farmers got their initial start to farm ownership through share milking .
Moving up from farm manager to lower order share milker now getting a percentage between 25% to 30%of the milk cheque ( this was how I got a start in 1963) they then save enough to buy a small herd then move to a larger farm and herd ,saving for a deposit to buy land for them selves .
We were called cow cokkys back then .We worked far longer hours than the any one works now.
Methane from farm animals is a closed cycle as not one atom of carbon is added to the atmosphere .This was a scam thought up by activists at the Kyoto climate accord .
What carbon tax are the taxpayers paying on behalf of farmers and where is the money going to? There is no carbon tax being sent overseas YET,
This green infested socialist government here in New Zealand wants to cripple our economy by being the first country in the world to TAX methane emissions from farmed animals and nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer and urine .
New Zealand feeds 30 million people around the world so if there was a problem why should they not pay an emission tax on their food ?
I know what sharemilking is , many readers dont.
Im just pointing out the system of 50% going to the farm owner , who doesnt lift a finger while the sharemilker owns the cows and runs the farm ( often the sharemilker sub contracts the twice daily milking to others) is all possible because of the high returns and capital growth from ‘white gold as its half seriously called.
A farmer owned cooperative which takes all the product whether they want to or not is agrarian socialism.
The carbon tax of farmers has been paid by taxpayers since the National party ( farmer backed) signed onto the Kyoto treaty in the late 1990s.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-zealand-signs-kyoto-protocol-climate-change
Minister in Charge Simon Upton.
Guess who signed the 2016 Paris climate treaty as well, the National government and every MP voted for the Zero Carbon act to make its provisions the law of the land ( including each farmer to ‘contribute’ a tiny % of the Carbon emissions)
I think your cows are smarter than you ….hehehe
Duker – doesn’t look like you know much about farming in NZ. From your writings, Grahams cars are definitely smarter than you.
The farmer owned co-op (I gather you mean Fonterra) doesn’t take all the milk nor is it anything like socialism. Even Wikipedia recognises that. There are a lot of other dairy companies. The tanker signs at farm gates around here indicate there are three companies that the milk goes to. There are also large deer, sheep and goat milking herds about 15-30km away from here. whose produce mainly goes to cheese and specialty milk factories.
The farm owner in a 50/50 sharemilking has to pay a lot of the costs – fertiliser rates etc. Every kg of milk solids is supposed to take a kg of fertiliser. Sharemilking Agreements | Bramwell Bate
As Graham pointed out that is the way farmers get “promoted” and most of those owners were sharemilkers.
The issue is more the corporate owners who have on managers or lower order sharemilkers. But they are pure capitalists.
Thanks for that Chris,
Effect on New Zealand agriculture = ruinous.
Effect on climate = zero.
Emissions of what?
If cows are allowed ‘free range’ they work as carbon capture devices.
It’s because they are very fussy eaters – they like to eat only sugar.
They know that when confronted by a field of grass, the sugar is to be found in the leaves of the grasses = where the plants absorb CO2, sunlight & water.
Cows have adapted their ‘mouthparts’ ## so as to selectively harvest only the green, growing, juicy, sugar-filled and nutrient rich leaves, leaving the stalks and seed-heads behind.
They ‘know’ that the stalks are simply sugar-free indigestible cellulose. It has no interest to them
## If you have ever allowed yourself to be ‘kissed’ by a cow (they are very affectionate), you will realise what I mean there.
They do ‘French Kissing’ and their tongues have got to be The Roughest Hardest Most Abrasive Thing you ever met.
(They are trying to lick the salt off your skin – they use it to maintain pH 7 in their stomachs – there is method in their (affection) madness)
For the cows it has All The Benefits.
They get nutrient rich food with as much bang-per-buck as possibleThey don’t get bellies full of ‘fibre’ which sucks nutrients out of them, gives them belly-ache, causes them to poo a lot and makes them gassy. (Makes them burp)For Gaia and Ma Nature, the cows have great big paddling feet and these work to pummel the denuded stalks of grass into the top layer of the soil.
They obviously do still consume a lot of fibre and we all know the result = Cow Pies
Three benefits there:
The grass to throws up some new leaves for the cows to eatThe cellulosic stalks feed the soil.Cow pies further help to bury the old denuded grass-stalks but especially encourage bugs, beetles, worms. They process the pies, the cellulose, the soil and they retain micro nutrients and trace elements
NOT the soil bacteria, cellulose feeds the fungi. They do the initial processing and feed the bacteria which then process the soil and feed the grass.
The cellulose retains moisture and builds soil structure, allowing it to drain freely but also to retain a lot of water and also the water soluble nutrients the grasses need and use. Notably Nitrogen.
And all that makes for = Nice Climate
Proper Free Range Grass Fed Cows have got to be the best thing that could ever have happened, both to us and to Planet Earth:
They build soilThey properly capture, store and recycle Carbon and nutrientsThey control the climate via the water trapped in that CarbonThey turn sugar (toxic to us) into the very thing we are supposed to eat, Saturated Fat
Yet now they are totally demonised because of the most contrived and ass-over-tit piece of scientific garbage there could ever be.
i.e That the atmosphere ‘warms Earth’ when it fact it is an immense cooling machine
This world has gone completely mad
suicidally so
PS Rud is ‘a cow farmer’ – he will back up every word I have said here
PPS: Why do bullet points disintegrate when you do an edit?
Thanks Peta, that one’s a keeper …
And the cattle just do what the deer / bison / buffaloes did before we started to replace them with domestic cattle.
I was looking forward to my breakfast, right up to the point when I read this comment, Peta.
Guess I’ll just have to hope that those images of cow eating habits have dissipated by lunchtime.
In addition to the carbon taxes there’s a drive to reduce nitrates going into the rivers and waterways as well. One News here in NZ showed us a story tonight about how fresh water was being polluted by nitrates, and some expert told us all that farmers had to reduce their herds to combat this.
I wonder if the situation will become similar to what the farmers in the Netherlands are dealing with.
Yes . That’s a real problem compared to the ‘sustainably’ produced CO2 and methane the cows produce. A hidden factor is the PK a major non grass food supplement , also better known as palm kernel, yes those palms planted for their oil and the kernels
The real issue is the price of land , more cows and more supplements to produce more milk , which is processed by the farmers socialist cooperative Fonterra. Yes it’s the same price for it’s farmers no matter how far away they are from the plant or whether they need the milk or not, as the coop has to take what ever the farmer produces.
Reduce the land price by normal means and the farmers can live happily and debt fund the land and the share milkers can debt fund the cows
Anti-nitrate campaigns are driven by people who think they understand farming better than farmers, the same people who advised Sri Lanka to go organic, because organic farms produce the same yields as high intensity.
No its a real problem. Im surprised you are using meaningless tropes as a rebuttal. Like overfishing killed the fishing , over farming is killing the waterways and asking farmers is pointless as they keep saying – ‘we need more research’, again again for more than 20 years . The research has been done, they just dont like the answer.
Some districts have restricted dairy farming because of the high nitrate load ( dairy cows especially drink a lot of water) that is poisoning some of the major lakes.
You should consult a doctor,Duker as you have contracted verbal diarrhea from to close a contact with the greens .
PKE stands for palm kernel expeller which is what is left after the palm oil is extracted and it is a waste product that was either burnt or pushed into the sea.
It is exported around the world for cattle fodder and is a good feed during droughts and dry times to help supplement the dry pasture .
This line that you have written above is straight out of the greens playbook as they blamed New Zealand farmers for the destruction of forests in Indonesia .
If anyone is to blame it is all the people who use the products that contain palm oil.
You are spouting absolute crap about Fonterra as you are ignorant of how Fonterra came about.
The government of the day encouraged The New Zealand Dairy Company and the Kiwi Dairy company to combine with the assets of the New Zealand Dairy board as there was no longer any need for that government layer of bureaucracy.
This is where you fell in the cow poo over your head Duker .
The government made the rule that the newly formed company had to pick up any and all milk offered as a condition of handing back the dairy boards assets to a farmers run cooperative .
I am a foundation shareholder of Fonterra so I know what I am talking about.
I have attended many shareholders meetings and the subject of charging for the cartage of milk has never been raised .
And it never will as we are a cooperative company not a bloody socialist like you duker. .
O-kay.
So, how is the food currently produced by grazing herbivores going to be replaced?
Other sources of income. 65% of their export income comes from agriculture + a lot of pretty awesome food. When they blow up agriculture, well they also have some of the most liberal prostitution laws of any Western country. I’m hope for New Zealand’s sake they vote out the current clowns, before their desperate kids start aspiring to big money jobs entertaining rich foreigners, like they do in Thailand.
That is just nonsense. Most of NZ’s dairy farmers sell their milk to Fonterra which sells mostly milk powder for about $7 a kilo. In contrast in my local supermarket Parmesan for examples sells for over a $100 a kilo. Sell milk powder is a race to the bottom since all milk powder is essentially the same. If NZ farmers sold premium products rather than milk powder they could make a lot more money from fewer cows reducing pollution from nitrates and methane and requiring less time working. It would be a win-win situation for everyone.
Ah so your plan to help farmers climb the value chain is to punish them with taxes until they get it right? The beatings will continue until morale improves?
Have you ever run a business?
“Have you ever run a business?”
What a silly question, Eric.
The dairy farmers dont pay any taxes anyway , as the business model is to keep buying land – loaded with debt- rather than make cash profits from farming that are taxable
The largest company – farmer owned Fonterra pays zero corporate tax – and gets a major tax refund of $250 mill- this is $20 bill per year revenue company- because the system of GST/VAT refunds for exports.
Yes thats right they get tax refunds and have for decades
You should be arrested for spreading disinformation Duker.
It is time you were banned for spreading lies .
.Fonterra is a cooperative company which is owned by the supplying share holders .
A milk price is set at the start of the season but may vary up or down .
Fonterra then pays out a dividend from the manufacture of certain niche products and on any overseas investments.
The dividend is paid direct to farmers and it is then counted as their income along with their monthly milk payments .
Yes Fonterra does not pay much tax because it is a cooperative so all income is paid to the shareholders .
I don’t know were you get that rubbish from but have you seen how much banks are charging on mortgages now 8 to 9 percent interest. .You cant buy much of a farm for $3million so if you had a million deposit you would be paying around $170.000 interest a year .
As Graham pointed out, you are just a liar Duker and not even a good one.. Here is the latest annual report showing they paid significant corporate tax
Fonterra Announces FY22 Annual Results
if they don’t- there’s probably a good reason- maybe you should ask them instead of pontificating
Dairy products is highly restricted acess to most high consuming western countries. NZs own market is small
So its fanciful to suggest the high volume producer like Fonterra can make that investment without market acess.
US Canada , Europe all love ‘Free Trade’ but slam the door when it comes to agriculture and especially dairy products.
Its like saying to US wheat or soya beans etc farmers , ‘move up the value chain’ . Its just a buzz phrase with no practical effect
You actually got that right Duker
You to should consult a doctor I Walton as you have caught some sort of disease off the greens.
If you lived anywhere out in the country you would see the 100s of milk tankers fetching the milk from the farms .
During the spring so much milk arrives every day that the company has to process it within 24 hours .A lot of milk is skimmed with the cream churned into butter and AMF Anhydrous milk fat..The skim milk is then dried into skim milk powder.The quickest way to handle the massive volume is to dry it into whole milk powder
A lot of cheese is manufactured and a large amount of milk is sold on the local market
A lot of special products are manufactured such as UHT milk and cream and specialty cheeses .
There is only so much market for specialty products and over supply would soon crash the premium prices .
How many kilos of Parmesan did you buy this week ?
Have you ever been past Litchfield Izaak? What do you think is in those massive towers? Cheese.What about Reporoa – whey alcohol.
You are as ignorant as Duker and that is a very low bar.
I meant the actual food, not the revenue.
Grazing land is grazed for a good technical reason.
The rural supporting National party VOTED unanimously for the Zero Carbon Act to legally implement the Paris Treaty climate rules.
30% reduction by 2030 said the the National Party PM
There is no ‘voting out’ when its 99% of the parliament voted for it
Soylent Green (1973) Official Trailer – Charlton Heston, Edward G Robinson Movie
Well, that’s one option.
Farmers in New Zealand need to form a BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer-Citizen Movement) to put a stop to those who want to penalise the hand that feeds.
Indeed, both in New Zealand and the USA. More the mutton the merrier.
The tax system gives them huge advantages and refunds. Treat them the same as others and stop the taxpayers funding their carbon costs.
Thats what its about , The carbon taxes are there – have been since the Kyoto treaty in 1999 was signed- just tthe taxpayers have paid it nad the farmers want it to continue.
Up to the 1970s the country ran a EU style subsidised framing system where direct payments went for per head of sheep or cattle, buying up surpluses when prices were low .
So those Dutch farmers seem to have forgotten who is the hand feeding them with the massive EU subsidies
More lies and now more lies from the DuKer.
Farmers pay exactly the same carbon taxes as every one else in New Zealand which at the moment are added to all fuel sales.
Grassland farmers actually se-quest soil carbon as the top soil builds up with the dung from the animals .
It can be measured but the boffins in charge cant or don’t and most probably won’t measure the build up from year to year as it would destroy their hold over the population .
This is exactly their attitude to measuring the carbon sequestration of farm plantings around rivers and creeks and our native (bush) forest even if these bush blocks are registered in the Queen Elizabeth Trust to be protected for eternity .
I do not earn one carbon credit for the bush blocks on my farm registered in the QE2 trust .
The trouble with you Duker is that YOU have forgotten who is the hand feeding you .
The New Zealand farmers not only feed you but they provide 70% of New Zealands foreign exchange .
Just think a little before writing crap on this site .
Amazing how increased taxes makes everything groovy for the environment.
Politicians will support any harebrained scheme that leads to more government revenue and more spending that they control to buy votes and skim off into their offshore bank accounts.
The Climate Change ™ scam is a witches’ brew of warmunist true believers, anti-human vegans, power-hungry politicians, crony capitalist greenwashers, and careerist pseudoscientists, all independently pursuing their personal interests at the expense of the general public. No conspiracy is needed for all these miscreants to harm society.
that leads to more government revenue
I’m not sure about that. Either they think that more taxes always means more revenue, or they want something else other than just revenue.
Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, was hit by a damaging cyclone two months ago. Our government institution for climate monitoring and research, the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) claimed in the msm that there is an increasing pattern of these events, unprecedented and a sign of the climate crisis. They based this on comparison with their official record of storm events in the late 19th century.
An independent researcher, Ian Wishart, studied the historical record of storm events in the late 19th century. He found that they had missed a significant number of large damaging storms from their data.
No response from NIWA. A government department caught red handed fudging data.
https://theplatform.kiwi/assets/article_files/2023/march/climate-of-fear-report-by-ian-wishart.pdf
Wishart should demand a response.
At least New Zealand doesn’t have George Moonbat Monbiot
“Guardian columnist George Monbiot came to live in Mid Wales a while ago. We can’t have made him feel very welcome, as he has been campaigning non-stop against our sheep-farming way of life ever since. He is fond of referring to sheep as ‘woolly maggots‘. He has described Britain’s countryside as being ‘sheep-wrecked‘. He has complained that the landscape of Dartmoor has been ‘comprehensively shagged’ by the ‘white plague’. I am tempted to ask: ‘Are you okay, George?’”
Or the Goldsmith brothers – Zac and Ben
“[Ben Goldsmith] declared in the Mail on Sunday last month that if we are to save Britain, we have to stop farming sheep. In Goldsmith’s telling, it would appear that everything is the fault of sheep. Global warming? Sheep. The extinction of native species? Sheep again. Flooding? Their hoof prints are all over it.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/10/the-green-war-on-sheep/
Zac was Carrie’s best chum and when he lost his seat in the election she ensured Boris made him a peer – and environment secretary.
Nice work if you can get it.
We don’t need a Moonbat when we have a Green party in government with even sillier ideas.
Hey come on. We’re phasing out smoking, Ardern has a new job policing our thoughts, and we beat up anyone who wants to give a public talk. Who wouldn’t want to come here and eat over-priced meat?
“beat up anyone who wants to give a public talk.”
Especially women, I hear….
“Kelly-Jay Keen’s violent encounter with trans activists in Auckland has made one thing clear beyond doubt: the trans movement has a serious misogyny problem. ”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/03/28/i-thought-i-would-be-crushed-to-death/
It won’t be long until straight women in New Zealand have to wear drag queen makeup to walk the streets, to avoid being attacked by men in dresses, kind of like a woke version of a burka.
Methane has exactly zero affect on climate, as it’s LWIR spectrum is entirely covered by that of water vapour. Atmospheric methane = ~1.8ppm, whereas water vapour is variable, but usually between 20,000-40,000 ppm. I personally don’t know any NZ farmers, but if you do, please make them aware of these facts.
What are the ‘carbon costs ‘ of sex tours? Enquiring minds would like to know…..
Same holds for forestry. The climatistas want to stop forestry- to lock up the forests to do nothing but sequester carbon. They don’t seem to understand where wood comes from for homes, furniture and paper products like toilet paper! This new forestry hating movement is called PROFORESTATION.
Hitler was a vegetarian. Heinrich Himmler was a particular fan of biodynamic agriculture, the origin of organic farming.
Mad notions keep getting recycled. Lysenko lives!
Geez Tom,
Let’s not disparage the crunchy con’s in WUWT with Nazi invoked ad hominins. All of the bath water is worth tossing but not the baby.
Organic farming is old. Modern ag is new. The human race flourished farming and feeding itself.
I get it that modern ag feeds the world. It is a very wonderful thing!
But people can also feed themselves at least in part from their own land. Organics works on a small scale and it’s cheaper with far less pit falls than modern ag procedures. No reason to pit the old against the new.
There is a distinction between the old and the new, but it does not need to be separated either by the left or the right.
It is the Utopian dream of some is that the human population would be revert to 16 c. levels and be restored to small agrarian communities doing it the old way.
Nice idea maybe but think of the heinousness process of getting there. Sure insanity. Yet, there is no reason why people can’t live alternative lifestyles because they like that sort of thing…. like myself.
Organics only works for about seven years. Then all the phosphate and other fertilisers put on by earlier farmers has run out. Of course, animals are probably dead before then from lack of cobalt and selenium which many soils rare deficient in.
It depends on the soil type. Black alluvial basalts can keep going for decades with legume rotations.
How common are those soils – only round Auckland? . I was talking about the soils in central plateau for the deficiencies
No, they’re not common. That’s why it can work in a (very) few places.
My experience is the Qld Darling Downs and NSW NW Slopes. All I know about NZ is what I’ve read.
All those beef and sheep bones….. great source of phosphate and Nitrogen. Now a days bones are expensive because of the bone broth demand…. Ramen and other bone broth niches. But even after the bones have been boiled, they can be milled for as a phosphate and nitrogen applications. They are absorbed slower than super phosphate and you don’t have to worry about careful titrations. Too much phosphates makes stuff taste terrible.
The Mennonite farmer in my local community use bones, manure, pig fecal elixir…foul stuff. Why sell that stuff when you can process and use it yourself at a higher profit. These guys now how to work and work it to make a buck. Again we’re not taking 100,000 acre industrial wheat farms in Alberta. But the PA Mennonite farmer is a very efficient capitalist…. they waste nothing and the work like dignified little freight trains….something that is lost on the rest of us…..
Thanks Chris for your comment.
Distinction without separation. Organics and modern ag. No reason to pit one against the other. Obviously, organics is not a solution for feeding the world in large scale industrial farming…maybe in some instances it is but mostly it is not for wide variety of reasons….cost being the highest. Economics of scale makes organics very onerous.
(we live in a political age online were we tend separate every thing into nice neat opposing categories… no need for it.)
I know Organics is being touted as a solution by the radical environmentalist’s and to do so is flirting with famine…because the world is fed from very highly concentrated and massive economics of scale due to a missive culture shift since WWII. We cannot expect to shift back but people if they want to should be allowed to…..they should be provided regulatory gates to walk right into subsistence/commercial farming on a small scale.
The family next door has 4 acres and provides us goat meat and milk. I provide them produce and fruit….. this works as long as the nut job tax gluttons don’t get in the middle of it.
On the other hand organic farming on a small scale works just fine. Bone meal is a thing especially if you raise chickens or goats or whatever which makes it cheaper than buying Super Phosphate. Potassium is in common wood ash….cheap and can be used sparingly. I grew 6 tons of produce on one acre… the same acre in the city of Philadelphia for over a 6 year for local markets…. until it was clear it was time to leave Philly.
Now I just do small scale subsistence farming for my family very cheaply and organically not because I love organics but because it’s simple and I use my own resources for fertilizer and compost because it’s cheaper. i don’t need herbicides or pesticides other than Kaolin clay (inert). for the allium fly.
So I produce 40% of my food budget. This is so I don’t have to spend my salary dollar which I almost have to earn two to spend one and I ‘d rather do the manual labor that g to planet fitness. and I love my gardens and orchards..
I am a big capitalist. I love market competition. 30 million families doing what I am doing would force the food industry to up their game a bit in terms of quality and prices. Just like the Micro brewing market did to the industrial brewers in the past 35 years. It’s never going to happen but the numbers work.
I get it… I love industrial beer Yuengling and I love my home grown scratch beer as well… no need to pit one against the other.
Good to see you actually walk the talk JC. And that you recognise that what works on a small scale cannot feed the populations of cities. Now convince the idiots who promote it as the answer how stupid they are.
It’s an extremely-normal sunny April 12th day in New Zealand 2055 but “where is the beef and mutton?”! Only thing for dinner is porridge-meat made in factory in Alberta Canada….if you’re lucky.
There was a time that Ireland, Australia, New Zealand were crawling with sheep grazing vast stretches of marginal lands (not suitable for normal grain farming). lamb and Mutton were plentiful and affordable for the masses. The same was true in the US until the 1970s, when cattle in fields were a common site all over the country…that is .when beef was plentiful and affordable to the masses. Not sure if the centralization of commodities markets wrecked all of it or that global demand increased with prosperity. If that is the case, then local people have to work local lands to produce meat in local markets for themselves to compete with the larger markets.. It’s already happening in PA to a small degree. The big boys will just pass on the increased regulatory costs and taxes to the consumer and produce less in de-facto colluded markets. Put a regulatory/tax bite on local people growing local meat, it will trigger a big political black lash like it did in the Netherlands.
The bulk of Australian sheep were Peppin Merinos for woll production, with a proportion of Border Leicester cross for meat in higher rainfall areas.
The wool price collapse in the 1980s caused a lot of production to switch to fat lambs and beef cattle.
Merino is awesome. My wife spins her own yarn and weaves and knits. We buy fleeces from a guy down the road. Wool is far better than any of it’s alternatives. I am still wearing sweaters all winter long every year sweaters my mother knitted from Shetland wool from Scotland in 1974 and still use the same blankets…. my grandchildren will be using them.
I am assuming that the beef and mutton/lamb produced in NZ is grass feed not food lot fed. Land prices have gone through the roof in the US making grass grazing very expensive. In Pennsylvania, where I live, there are plenty of hill sides for grazing but most people are too lazy to or two affluent to even think about it.
The majority of New Zealands sheep are farmed on hills and mountains .
There were 70 million ewes 30 years ago but now less than half of that number .
Our dairy cow numbers have increased over the last 30 years simply because of economics .
Many different fruits are being grown on a commercial scale for export and the areas are expanding every year .
Kiwi fruit ,apples ,citrous ,cherries,and many others are exported around the world Our wine exports to the world are also expanding..
Hawks Bay which has been devastated by a tropical cyclone normally exports well over 30 thousand shipping containers of apples each year from the port of Napier.