DairyNZ: Strong payouts offset high farm costs
The dairy sector is in a relatively stable position, with strong milk price payout forecasts continuing to offset ongoing high farm costs, according to DairyNZ.
New Zealand has the highest agricultural emissions of the 170 countries that have ratified the Paris agreement, says DairyNZ’s Nick Tait.
This is why many countries are watching to see what NZ will do over the next 10-20 years, he says.
The dairy industry contributes 22.9%, or just under a quarter, of NZ’s emissions. About 49.2% of all emissions come from agriculture, of which dairy is about 46.5%.
“For a developed country we have a unique profile. The closest one to us is Ireland where about 30% of emissions come from agriculture,” Tait told the NZ Institute of Primary Industry Management conference in Hamilton last week.
A lot of work is occurring together, he says. The NZ Greenhouse Gas Agricultural Gas Research Centre and the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium are research streams closely linked.
Within the last two years BERG (Biological Emission Research Group) has been set up ‘’to quantify what we can do to reduce emissions and what that is going to cost us’’. Reports from that are imminent.
“There are lot of work streams all trying to work together and that includes being part of the Global Research Alliance,” Tait says.
“After the Paris agreement was signed we were asked as an industry ‘what are you doing to help the farmers to reduce emissions?’
‘’As of June last year we launched the Dairy Action Climate Change. That was an industry/government agreement with Fonterra as a partner and supported by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment. That tried to set the steps for building a platform to look at what we can do in the context of a profitable and sustainable dairy industry.
“This is due to finish in November this year.”
First came building a foundation, including workshops for rural professionals in September last year, for farmers in June this year and other roadshows for farmers and dairy environment leaders.
Secondly they set up a couple of training courses with AgResearch and Massey University to try to seed the market to train rural professionals.
And they went to dairy environment leaders’ groups and asked ‘who would like to become climate change ambassadors?’ “[These represented] farmers who can speak for the industry so it doesn’t look like it is coming from us all the time.
‘’Another component due to start shortly is ‘Steps to a Lower Emissions Dairy Sector’. This is real cases with real partner farms where we can track a journey and see what emissions reduction and nitrogen leaching reduction would actually look like.
‘’We want to quantify the effect on production and profitability and the feasibility of some of these mitigations options.
“It is all very good to model a reduction, but actually to quantify that onfarm is where we want to go.”
The last component is the onfarm recording Fonterra has implemented to set up -- similar to the nitrogen programme -- a report pathway to 100 farms as a pilot to look at what their actual emissions would be and what information they would want on those emissions.
‘’They looked at that in Overseer and as part of a life cycle analysis and a national inventory. They will provide information back to farmers on what their footprint would actually look like.’’
Like many manufacturers around the world, European agricultural machinery and tractor manufacturers are currently operating in a difficult market environment. But they are heading to the world’s largest agricultural machinery event in Hanover next month with a degree of cautious optimism.
Established in 2021, the John Deere Technician of the Year Awards champion the important contribution parts and service technicians make to the Australian and New Zealand agriculture, construction and forestry industries.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) is calling on farmers from all regions to take part in the final season of the Sheep Poo Study aiming to build a clearer picture of how facial eczema (FE) affects farms across New Zealand.
New Zealand is closer to eradicating bovine TB than ever before, but possums remain a threat, says Beef + Lamb New Zealand.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has joined the debate around the proposed sale of Fonterra’s consumer and related businesses, demanding answers from the co-operative around its milk supply deal with the buyer, Lactalis.
The ACT Party says media reports that global dairy giant Nestle has withdrawn from the Dairy Methane Action Alliance shows why New Zealand needs to rethink its approach to climate.
OPINION: Dairy industry players are also falling by the wayside as the economic downturn bites around the country.
OPINION: Methane Science Accord, a farmer-led organisation advocating for zero tax on ruminant methane, will be quietly celebrating its first…