Beef + Lamb NZ’s submission to the Climate Change Commission draft report to the Government claims the sector has contributed little additional atmospheric warming for nearly 20 years with biogenic methane emissions from sheep and beef cattle falling 31% since 1990.
That improved efficiency is illustrated by sheep numbers halving since 1990, while the volume of lamb produced has fallen just 8%, the B+LNZ submission states.
Beef cattle numbers have fallen 20% over that same period.
“These reductions in the number of capital livestock and the improvements in productivity have been hugely positive environmentally and economically,” B+LNZ said in its submission.
“As an example, our sector has achieved a more than 20% reduction in nitrate leaching per unit of saleable product, while simultaneously increasing the value of its exports by 83% to over $9 billion per annum.”
Absolute greenhouse gas emissions from sheep have fallen about 40% since 1990 and 10% for beef, including dairy beef.
“Collectively, the sheep and beef livestock production sector’s greenhouse gas emissions are 30% lower than in 1990,” it said.
This B+LNZ data is in response to a suggestion in a report by the commission that livestock numbers may have to fall by 15% for the primary sector to meet its methane targets
The producer group says emissions intensity, or emissions per unit of production, has reduced at an average of about 1% a year since 1990, but the submission warns there are biological and biophysical limits to the scale and magnitude of efficiency and productivity gains that can be achieved.
“The overwhelming sentiment B+LNZ has received from farmers is that they are disappointed the work they have achieved to date, to both reduce their emissions and increase the sequestration within their farm systems, is not recognised in the commission’s advice,” it said.
There is similar concern at the absence in the commission’s report of a key plank in the Paris Agreement on climate change, that emissions reduction policies should not threaten food production.
B+LNZ also highlights the significant amount of carbon being sequestered on pastoral farmland.
“Farmers must be recognised where they can demonstrate they have had a positive impact on the climate, a sustained decrease in emissions and/or an increase in their carbon sequestration,” it said.
“Methane-emitting sectors are asked to continue to do more, and faster, in the short-term to compensate for other sectors who have not acted.
“That is inequitable,” it said.
B+LNZ also references the 2.8m ha of native habitat and 180,000ha of forestry managed by farmers, which it estimates sequesters between 5.5t CO2-e (carbon dioxide equivalent) and 19.7 Mt CO2-e, depending on how it is measured.
The submission warns domestic climate policy should not focus on greenhouse gas mitigation in isolation from freshwater and biodiversity policy, but welcomed the commission’s recommendation that using forestry offsets to meet emission targets is a short-term solution.
“While forestry offsets enable us to make progress towards our targets, they are only a way of delaying the inevitable, the science tells us that carbon dioxide emissions must reduce, they cannot continue to increase,” it said.
Having said that, B+LNZ is critical of the commission’s view that between 1.1 and 1.4m ha of marginal land could be planted in forestry, predominantly on sheep and beef farms, reducing the area available for livestock by 700,000ha.
“The commission has provided very little evidence of the potential socio-economic impacts these significant levels of planting will have on the sheep and beef sector and on the rural communities and economies sheep and beef farmers are integrally a part of,” it said.
