Beef + Lamb New Zealand says the Ministry for the Environment’s report Net emissions and removals from vegetation and soils on sheep and beef farmland is valuable because it recognises there is significant sequestration happening on sheep and beef farmland in New Zealand and is part of an ongoing process to build understanding of this […]
Climate Change
Hotter, drier, CRISPR: editing for climate change
Gene editing technology will play a vital role in climate-proofing future crops to protect global food supplies, according to scientists at The University of Queensland. Biotechnologist Dr Karen Massel from UQ’s Centre for Crop Science has published a review of gene editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 to safeguard food security in farming systems under stress from extreme and variable climate conditions. […]
Farmers help identify solutions to reduce farm footprint
New DairyNZ research shows farmers can identify ways to increase efficiency and reduce environmental footprint – but there will be challenges for some. The Greenhouse Gas Partnership Farms research project worked with farmers to identify and model how their farms might reduce both nitrogen loss and greenhouse gas emissions. “Making these gains will be the […]
New leader for Climate Change Ambassadors
Award-winning dairy farmer Fraser McGougan has been appointed chair of the DairyNZ Climate Change Ambassadors. Climate Change Ambassadors are leaders for climate change action on dairy farms. They help communicate the challenges and opportunities dairy farmers face in playing their part to address climate change, alongside the rest of New Zealand. “The 13 ambassadors are […]
NZ needs its own Project Warp Speed on climate change
by Peter Griffon, founding Director of the Science Media Centre. This article was first published in BusinessDesk. OPINION: The good news about the Climate Change Commission’s draft plan to meet our Paris Agreement commitments and avoid the worst of climate change is that it doesn’t hinge on technology yet to be developed. The commission has […]
Farmers see pluses and minuses in Climate Change Commission report
By Andrew Hoggard, President Federated Farmers of New Zealand OPINION: The recent Climate Change Commission report had in it some useful recommendations and themes along with other points that are questionable. Pleasingly, the report does not ignore, but also does not fixate, on agricultural emissions. The public discourse In New Zealand for decades has largely […]
Fed Farmers: Our key takeaways from the Climate Commission report
The report supports many of the issues and policy positions Federated Farmers have been advocating consistently for over the years, such as: The fundamental difference between long-lived stock emissions (carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide) and short-lived flow emissions (biogenic methane). The report makes it clear that methane does not need to reach net zero in order […]
Feds survey shows farmer confidence has bounced back
Farmer confidence has bounced back to where it was pre-Covid19 but attracting and retaining staff remains a headache, the latest Federated Farmers Farm Confidence Survey shows. Of the nearly 1,100 farmers who completed the Research First survey in the second week of January, a net 5.5% considered current economic conditions to be good. That’s a […]
Climate Change report – We need to science our way out of this
It’s time for the New Zealand public to get ready for a discussion about how science can lead us out of our climate change crisis, Federated Farmers says. Yesterday’s report released by the Climate Change Commission was a massive piece of work which dives into every corner of New Zealand’s approach to achieving its climate […]
Harnessing the power of catchment groups
Policy aimed at changing practices on individual farms isn’t working, writes Jim Sinner from the Our Land and Water Collective Responsibility research team. Could collective management, through catchment groups, achieve better outcomes for our waterways? (This article was first published on the National Science Challenges website.) Over the past several years, I’ve had a growing […]