Concerns about the effectiveness of Overseer by an independent panel will have little effect on agriculture climate change partnership He Waka Eke Noa, which is well on track to meeting its targets.
Programme director for the partnership between Government, industry and Māori Kelly Forster says Overseer is on its list of approved tools when it comes to raising awareness of farmers knowing their greenhouse gas (GHG) numbers and having a plan to measure and manage their emissions, but He Waka Eke Noa does not look at it as a regulatory tool and its ability to provide real-time data, which is the problem raised by the panel.
“We’ve said it’s suitable for building awareness, for getting an understanding of tracking direction,” Forster said.
“If you’ve already got Overseer reports you can see what your emissions were and what will happen to them when you pull some different levers. It’s that trajectory of change that you’re looking for.
“But when it comes to pricing emissions, we’ve always said you can’t have a whole lot of different ways of calculating them.
“What we’ve been working on is, how will you calculate your emissions in a pricing scheme? Will it be one method to rule them all?”
Forster says more detail on that will be available in November, when He Waka Eke Noa’s industry partners start to rollout information to farmers about pricing options to get their views on the recommendations being worked on.
That engagement with farmers will be both face-to-face in regions and online. It will include a questionnaire for feedback on the options.
The feedback will be worked through and reflected in recommendations due to be made to government ministers at the end of March.
She says during the past few months representatives from industry groups, government policy, scientists and farmer representatives have been working through questions around sequestration, farm definitions, reporting and pricing.
“(That’s) in the context of lots of information and regulatory change that is coming at farmers. Knowing your greenhouse gas numbers and having them in a written plan might not be a really high priority for farmers, but we are quietly making great strides,” she said.
“We are on track for 50% of farmers to know their greenhouse gas numbers by the end of this year.
“We also aim for 25% of farmers to have a written plan to manage them (by then). This will usually be in farm environment plans and our partners are working hard to roll these out.”
Having half of New Zealand farmers know their GHG numbers by the end of the year is double the target He Waka Eke Noa had been set.
Forster says the dairy sector is already at around 100% in this area and the work that meat processors are doing to support the rollout of Beef + Lamb NZ’s new emissions calculator is getting real cut through with sheep and beef farmers, who up until recently have not had a simple tool they could use.
She says achieving the goal of 25% of farmers having a written plan to manage GHG emissions by the end of this year is challenging because there’s a lot involved in farm plans.
“You’re talking about additional bolt-ons to systems that have been rolled out for a while,” she said.
“But industry partners have pulled out all the stops to get climate change included in those farm plans and so, while we still need to do a push on that, we have a reasonable level of confidence that we will get to that target.”
As policy questions and implications of different approaches are worked through, details are sent to a farmer reference group, made up of farmers and growers around the country who play a critical role in crunching through that analysis, providing feedback on what they think.
“We genuinely seek their feedback and expertise,” she said.
Forster says they are a technical reference group but it’s more than that.
“It’s also the buy-in side of it; how things will land, what’s important to farmers, those sorts of things. Not just how practical it is to implement,” she said.
Bay of Plenty farmer Fraser McGougan is one of two farmers representing the dairy industry in the group. There are also two farmers or growers each representing B+LNZ, Horticulture NZ, Deer Industry NZ, the Foundation for Arable Research and Federated Farmers.
He says the crux of the issue facing farmers and growers is that in the need to decrease their contribution to climate change there are two options.
“One is to go into the ETS, where no farmer wins, or it’s He Waka Eke Noa, where we come up with mitigations ourselves that will enable the adaptation of farming within climate change,” McGougan said.
“The thing people have to remember is that this is not going to go away, no matter what political party is in power or what the flavour of the day is.
“This is something that is here, it’s real, it’s now and we’re going to have to talk about emissions pricing.
“There’s no escaping that emissions from farming are going to be priced but we want some of that money to be reinvested back into helping us decrease our footprint.
He says they’re also looking at the big picture and that includes profitability.
“We want sustainability but we still be able to continue farming, although within new rules,” he said.
The reference group has been meeting through Zoom, with one meeting so far also held in person in Wellington. Another is scheduled for September 1, although with the current lockdown that may need to be pushed back.
McGougan says the co-design approach to policy from He Waka Eke Noa that involves farmers is a good one.
“We are being listened to. As farmers we see some of the problems that they don’t see,” he said.
“Sometimes there’s simple ways of doing things and we can bring those to the fore, to bring in the practicalities of farming.”
