Columnist Rod Oram is struck by an encouraging summit on food and our futures, and a discouraging week from politicians and farmer leaders.
On the symbiotic subjects of agriculture and climate, the contrast between New Zealand’s realists and fantasists was starker than ever this week.
The realists turned up as delegates and speakers to the 2035 Oceania Summit on agriculture and food in Auckland on Monday and Tuesday – with 2035 signifying how excruciatingly short is the time we have left to achieve deep, climate-compatible changes to the way we farm and the food we produce.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, the fantasists and deniers — who exert a disproportionately large and damaging influence on our interminable and dysfunctional agriculture/climate debate — once again spoke complete nonsense against the Government’s efforts to entice farmers into playing even a minimally positive role on climate. Despite the fact such very modest efforts would make them better and more profitable farmers and businesses.
Amongst the worst of them was Andrew Hoggard, president of Federated Farmers, who said the proposals would “rip the guts” out of small-town New Zealand.
National and ACT’s agriculture spokespeople -- Barbara Kuriger and Mark Cameron – were also seriously ill-informed. They both claimed the Government’s proposals would mean less production here and more in higher-emitting farm systems overseas.
But in fact, any increase would be at worst minuscule, according to research commissioned by He Waka Eke Noa, the farmer-government working party on ag emissions, as I reported in this column in June.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, as the conference programme laid out: “Agriculture and the agrifood supply chain provide a significant contribution to the region’s greenhouse gas emissions. The 2035 Oceania Summit will focus on the role that agrifood tech will play in supporting farmers and growers to reduce emissions to net zero, as well as build more resilient growing systems to address the ongoing impact of a rapidly changing climate.”
The grave urgency of the problem and the big upside of the solutions was succinctly articulated to delegates by Professor Mark Howden, Director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University.
Far more significantly, he is vice chair of the IPCC’s Working Group 2 on “impacts, adaptation and vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems.” The IPCC is the United Nations global body on climate science, which draws on the research of thousands of scientists around the world.
His speech is worth quoting at length, which I’ve very lightly edited at a few points for the sake of brevity.
“In the case of methane, we're now triple pre-industrial levels. In the case of carbon dioxide, we're 50 percent higher than pre-industrial. So, this is really non-trivial mucking around with our climate system. As a result, we see the inexorable rise of temperature and also sea level right across the globe.
“In fact, it's not just going up. It's accelerating. It's going up faster and faster over time, and that's a really important message. This is actually something that is getting worse and worse, quicker in many ways than we expected previously.
“The impacts of climate change on agriculture are already astounding. We're actually 20 percent below what we otherwise would've been in terms of agricultural production because of climate change. This isn't a 2050 scenario. This is right now. What we see, is big implications for climate change on food.
“Similarly, we see big implications of food on climate change. If we look at our greenhouse gas emissions, the best estimate for that is our food systems produce 29 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions. That puts it on par with electricity generation.
“As decarbonisation goes through our electricity systems, industrial systems, and transport systems, that percentage for agriculture will increase unless we start putting a cap on it right now. That number is far, far too big to ignore from a political point of view. It's far, far too big to ignore from a consumer point of view, or shareholders or a whole range of other interested parties.
“As many people in this summit have talked about, there's urgency in terms of action. There's urgency in terms of emission reduction, and there's urgency in terms of climate adaptation, and we're falling behind on both.
“There's plenty of room within our existing farming systems to move along that emissions efficiency spectrum. But we can't just afford to rely on our existing systems. We need to think about climate smart agriculture, changing our systems so that they reduce greenhouse gases, maintain productivity, and are pre-adapted to future climate change. So we don't get nailed by changes that are happening all around us.
“We also need to think about transformational processes. If we're going to make big changes at scale, we can't afford just to tweak our systems. We need structural change. We need large scale rapid change, and importantly, the characteristics of those people that make incremental change are almost 180 degrees opposite.
“For those who do transformational change, the characteristics of policies which accelerate incremental change are very, very different from the characteristics of policies that accelerate transformational change. We need to think in much more nuanced ways about change processes in our systems and we need to also think outside the box.”
Thankfully we have some real farming leaders on climate in New Zealand. One is Synlait Milk, which I noted in my column last week.
In a similar vein this week, Pamu, our largest corporate farmer, issued its 2022 annual report, which integrates its financial, environmental and human resource performances.
The report makes 61 references to emissions and 55 to climate; and includes a five-page “issues discussion” on climate which is well worth reading. Below are some extracts from elsewhere in its report.
Climate change is “the greatest long-term challenge for the food and fibre sector, for New Zealand and for the world. Pāmu signalled its commitment to tackling climate change action when it took up a sustainability linked loan with Westpac Bank in 2021. We locked in to achieving verified carbon emissions targets and metrics reflecting sustainable farming practices across our portfolio. This loan was the first of its kind in New Zealand.”
- . . “This is our big year for climate change action. Pāmu is now planning all steps necessary for substantial emissions reduction and ensuring our business is resilient in the face of a changing climate. Along with complying with all legislative requirements, our work programme for 2022/23 will set science-based targets for emissions reduction, identify an independent emissions verifier and establish a roadmap for gross reductions within all farm operations. We will also step up Pāmu’s external reporting on emissions and their management.”
- . . “Much climate change-related work is already going on, including the Dairy-Beef Progeny Test and the AgResearch/Focus Genetics research project on genetic advances for lower-emitting sheep. Toitū certification is part of the roadmap, and by June 2023, 50 percent of Pāmu farms will be operating to this standard. The remainder will be on board in the year after that.”
Yet despite such positive examples of New Zealand farmers locking on to the fact that contributing to climate solutions is the very best business opportunity they are ever going to have, the ag climate debate here is dramatically behind world best practice, as this column frequently reports.
Far worse, our incrementalism is so timid and ineffectual we are light years away from being transformational farmers, which is what the planet and people desperately need.
