REX Podcast interviews Owen Jennings: An insult to Farming Families
Dom George from Rural Exchange at Mediaworks sits down with former Federated Farmers President Owen Jennings to unpack his keynote at the International Livestock Conference hosted by the World Association of Sustainable Livestock in Spain. They dive into why New Zealand is pouring over a billion dollars into methane mitigation research for a problem Owen argues barely exists—and how current methane accounting protocols inflate New Zealand’s warming impact by a staggering 300 to 400%. Practical, pragmatic, and deeply skeptical of the prevailing narrative, Owen calls out the distortions that have skewed policy and priorities away from real-world solutions on the farm.
“Farming families throughout the world are hurt by biased science and undue pressure from green groups who demand outcomes that can never be justified. We must keep struggling for science that has integrity and rules that recognise facts including the way the world’s farmers feed the billions.
”
Extract of Owen’s Presentation:
One of the most critically important developments in livestock farming, internationally, is the growing realisation that ruminant methane emissions are not source of problematic climate change. Recent scientific findings¹ coupled with a more principled appraisal of the established facts is resulting in strong demands to have ruminant eructation removed from all climate change taxing.
This paper proposes building an international constituency under the World Association for Sustainable Livestock Farming to have ruminant methane emissions removed from the purview of the Paris Agreement.
The reality is that ruminants are not warming the planet in any measurable or troublesome manner. To the contrary, most livestock farms are carbon neutral with the majority removing and sequestering more Greenhouse Gas than they emit.