Wednesday, 06 November 2019 08:45

Hot air?

Written by The Hound

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With the Government wanting to implement huge costs on the livestock farming sector by making New Zealand the only country to include farming in an ETS, this old mutt thought it might actually get serious about funding mitigation research.

However, it seems PR stunts and warm fuzzies are the order of the day, going by its most recent effort.

Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor gained huge media attention for the Government’s backing of a project that “could substantially reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from cattle”.

But this “backing” amounted to a piffling $100,000 granted to the Cawthron Institute to see if a native seaweed might be turned into a greenhouse gas-busting cattle feed supplement.

The joke is that $100,000 is far less than O’Connor and his office staff would spend a year on travel, and apparently AgResearch has already rejected the seaweed option.

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