Despite the circular science, livestock like my heifers are condemned as climate culprits. There’s no chance to enter a plea, let alone ask for a trial by science. We are told we must do “our bit”. Yet our stable, sustainable livestock systems get no credit for the CO₂ absorbed to grow the grass in the first place. Basic high school science tells us that the only way ruminants produce greenhouse gases is by eating plants that use greenhouse gases to grow. You can’t have one without the other.

Farmers are being asked to celebrate a target that changes nothing for the climate, wastes taxpayer money, and ignores real science. Our farmers feed a growing global population with high-quality, natural, safe, emissions-efficient food. That ability is something to protect, not punish. New Zealand farming isn’t the climate problem, it’s part of the climate solution. Our grass-fed, pasture-based systems produce some of the lowest emissions per kilogram of food in the world. Undermining that system with unnecessary interventions erodes our competitive advantage and the trust that underpins New Zealand’s brand.

These matters are critically important to our rural community.  There was a loud clamour when the Government reduced reduction targets recently, but no one stood up and demanded facts, truth or even IPCC based data. 
Perhaps we will have to wait till the outrageous demands for reductions actually hits farmers' pockets.  Having to round up all animals 3 or 4 times a year and force a bolus down their throats is expensive and physically dangerous to animal and human.

You are in your favourite restaurant. You have narrowed down the choices to two fillet steaks. They are both grassfed from New Zealand.
One is proudly claimed to be from a farm that uses management techniques to help lower methane emissions. That has to be a plus, surely. The other steak makes no such claim. You are almost ready to order when you meekly check – “what are these ‘management techniques’ that lower methane emissions?”

Press Release: “We are going down a dangerous and totally unnecessary road using bromoform”. MSA questions the promotion of methane-reducing products containing tribromomethane (bromoform) set to be unleashed on pastoral farming. Bromoform is ozone-depleting, classified as a volatile organic compound (VOC), and banned inUSA from use in livestock destined for human consumption. In NZ, these products are restricted from use in breeding or dairy cattle. MSA has fears around food safety, animal welfare, and doubts that such intensive, expensive interference in the natural biogenic rumination process is either necessary or justified.

We are endlessly told that livestock are responsible for half of New Zealand’s total emissions. Despite research showing the warming impact of livestock methane is so small it cannot be measured, the widespread perception remains that our livestock are dangerously warming the planet.

So where does this belief come from?

OPINION: Ruminant methane mitigation tools were a bit of a joke when first proposed; surely no one would be foolish enough to interfere with nature at its best… Be warned. The boffins, bureaucrats and levy groups have been working behind the scenes on your behalf, on your dollar, in a bid that is wasting millions on pills and potions that we don’t need, all the while decrying “we won’t hit you with a methane tax”. Vax or tax, it’s the same thing. Compulsory use of mitigation tools is arriving. In fact, Beef+Lamb NZ …

.. This is why the ‘climate industrial complex’ likes to focus on ‘emissions’ instead of ‘warming’. During the past decade, millions of dollars has been spent researching and funding biotechnologies that can be sold to farmers to reduce their GHG emissions number, even though technically there will be no reduction in global warming temperatures whatsoever.

.. this is the most important decision made in agricultural circles in decades, maybe ever. Such a momentous decision involving such complex and fraught science where there are vested interests that need exposure and where there are significant reservations stated by industry, by consumer groups, by scientists who have an in-depth understanding of the issue is ringing loud alarm bells.

… So, the theory, on which their models are based, is wrong. This matters because this theory is the basis of government policies that are requiring a reduction in methane emissions.
So, what was their theory? They tell us on page 134. They say, “Because at the time the scenarios were developed… it was thought that past trends would continue.”

the potential risks to human and animal health and the risk to our industry reputation of altering the rumen of our ruminants through methane vaccines, methane boluses, feed additives and GM grasses is of such huge consequence that all NZ farmers should get a say in this decision … Beef + Lamb and Federated Farmers were very quick to embrace GMO grasses, methane vaccines, feed additives, methane boluses and any other 'biotech tool' that alters the rumen of the gut without seeking clearance from farmers.

There has been a bit of discussion in the media lately about the Paris climate agreement and whether New Zealand should withdraw from it.
It seems to me that they are asking the wrong question. I have put a lot of time into trying to understand the climate change story and the question I think we should really be asking is, ‘should we pull out of the Paris agreement immediately, or in a few years once it collapses when people work out what is the true cost of net zero?’

Worse still, the Government has locked NZ into emissions reductions that will gut our agricultural sector— without even conducting a cost-benefit analysis. An OIA request confirmed no government agency has calculated the economic impact of staying or withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. They made a decision that will fundamentally alter our economy, restrict our farming sector and impact every single New Zealander without even checking if it makes economic sense.

Our industry advocates and politicians have a blind obsession with emissions but will not stop to consider what effect those emissions have on atmospheric temperature, even though their own scientific advisors have told them the answer is at best 4 millionths of a degree per year (effectively zero!)

What was Climate Minister Watts thinking about ratcheting up New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas reduction targets? … Who put their hand up at the Cabinet table for the taxpayers facing the impossible $24 billion plus bill for Watt’s amped up targets? Was there any pushback from Minister Willis who should be having nightmares wondering how to switch off this frenzied obsession with reducing GHG’s? … Has the Coalition got the arrogance to believe they can hold the rural vote ...

It’s disheartening and enraging to see Silver Fern Farms betray the very farmers it claims to represent and surrender to global greenwashing under the false banner of “sustainability”. Their latest email (18/12/24) outlining Scope 3 Emissions Targets is not just misguided, it’s a blueprint for the destruction of New Zealand farming independence, livelihoods and the integrity of our world-class farming systems, orchestrated by those meant to defend us. Let me strip away the platitudes and examine the true implications of this harmful overreach ..

We are the only sector in the world that utilises a GHG as part of our food production through photosynthesis process. Pasture-raised livestock are net sequesters of greenhouse gases but is ignored by our own sector.
These targets are not only unnecessary and misguided, they now fast-track the destruction of the integrity of our world-class red meat protein production .. and waste of taxpayer money and science resources that will be diverted even further towards chasing methane fairies instead of genuine R & D.

On one hand, they tout New Zealand’s clean, green farming image – a unique and market-leading story built on the backs of farmers who have spent decades pioneering sustainable practices.
On the other hand, they seem intent on pushing us toward unproven biotech solutions to satisfy corporate buyers’ fixation on Scope 3 emissions. The two approaches are fundamentally incompatible, and it’s time for SFF to decide where their priorities lie.

If you have kept your finger on the emissions pulse, none of the below information will be a surprise to you. However, if you are a farmer that has not been following New Zealand’s ruminant methane issue then you may be in for a nasty shock. .. New Zealand agriculture has been falsely accused of contributing to 50% of the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. I use the word ‘falsely’ because … an outdated metric has been used to model New Zealand’s GHG emissions contributions. Even the IPCC themselves have stated that the metric is unfit for purpose …

At what point did these ‘customers’ decide that lowering natural biogenic ruminant emissions was more important than exceptional animal welfare, free-range pastoral systems and allowing natural grazing behaviour of stock in low-input farming that doesn’t require high-intensity fossil-fuel burning interferences?
NZ needs to decide – are we intensifying into feedlots to play in the same game as those intensive, heavily subsidised high-input factory farms or will we continue on our naturally pasture-raised continuum which has proven to become more efficient each year ... Either leave us to it or get ready to ask taxpayers to underwrite expensive, intensive factory farming that will produce food that no New Zealander will ever afford to buy…