Follow the leaders
OPINION: Farmers are urging Kiwi banks and their overseas parent companies to follow the lead of America's six biggest banks and urgently withdraw from the Net Zero Banking Alliance.
While some banks are busy imposing emissions limits on farms they lend to – a practice critics say exceeds their mandate – ANZ is resisting the PC pressure to do the same. “At the moment, we’re not setting a dairy target, and the reason is that we don’t see the pathway clearly for our dairy customers to reducing emissions,” ANZ’s New Zealand chief executive Antonia Watson told The Post.
ANZ’s stance comes amid a banking inquiry and mounting criticism by farmers of their banks, plus anger at three of the four Aussie banks for setting tougher farm emissions reduction targets in NZ than they did in Australia.
