The Dairy Action for Climate Change plan announced at the National Fieldays includes a commitment to put rural professionals through the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Management course.
The first intake is already complete and another is due later this year.
The course is a product of the Transforming the Dairy Value Chain Primary Growth Partnership.
DairyNZ staff and Mike Hedley, Massey University’s director of fertiliser and lime research, have worked with a team from AgResearch, the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre to build the course.
With the inaugural intake initiated by DairyNZ, Hedley said the course intended to give rural professionals the confidence to discuss GHG to greater depth than had been the case.
“It gives them the ability to talk from a scientific base to farmers and to sceptics alike.
“And as other sectors like industrial and transport manage to reduce their emissions, the pressure is likely to grow on agriculture to do the same.
“However, being a biological system, it is more difficult to achieve that.”
But he hastened to say New Zealand had made advances in GHG research and ruminant emissions far ahead of other farming nations. A better understanding of those advances was included in the course.
“I think you may struggle to find the issue as high on the radar in other countries – many of them are not having the discussion for agriculture let alone running courses to better inform professionals and farmers alike.”
DairyNZ environmental extension specialist Nick Tait said a key part of the course included understanding components of GHG emissions on NZ dairy farms.
That included breaking down the generic greenhouse gas term into its component parts of nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide.
The link between nitrous oxide emissions to the atmosphere and nitrogen losses into waterways was also explained as was how linking GHG mitigation to nutrient footprint reduction could prove a win:win opportunity.
Hedley said all attendees to the first course were already experienced Overseer users and were required to run some hypothetical case studies for nutrient reduction and understand how that contributed to lower GHG emissions.
Recent work in the Pastoral 21 project in Waikato found GHG emissions fell by 16% on a farm also trialling low nitrogen inputs to lower its nutrient footprint.
Changes in feed composition could significantly affect gas and nutrient losses and in future might prompt a rework of the accounting system for gas calculation.
Rather than relying on a definition of drymatter intake based on the metabolisable energy in feeds, acknowledging feed properties that reduced methane or nitrous oxide emissions might be required.
“So the course is a means of producing an informed population of rural professionals who can push for these changes as well as inform farmers to make the right decisions sooner,” Hedley said.
Beyond the farmgate, Tait cautioned GHG emissions might become a market access issue00 and require a sector capable of understanding the science, policy and options for dairy farmers by a skilled and informed rural professional sector.
“Along with animal welfare I would suggest it is one of the things that consumers of our products will look at.
“Therefore, having informed conversations with farmers around mitigation options will become important.”
Hedley said while the sector continued to await a silver bullet in the form of a methane vaccination, for example, there were things that could be done sooner to effect some real reductions.
“Things we study include the impact of having more efficient cows with better health, reproduction and production performance.
“If you have that you reduce the number of replacements needed and the support land required.
“If we then have support land space we can look at land use options with lower emissions footprints or offsetting with carbon sequestration forestry.”
The course provided a melting pot for informed discussion encouraging students to consider options to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), even considering a GST like carbon charge across all activities.
The GHG course was modelled on a post-graduate version run at Massey. To allow for working professionals’ time constraints it spanned six weeks of reading and study.
It included a three-day course at Massey finishing with a two-hour examination.
“The feedback we had from the first course was highly positive. For rural consultants this is another arrow in their quiver,” Tait said.
