October 13, 2022

 

New Zealand to tax greenhouse gasses that livestock make from 2025

New Zealand's greenhouse gasses tax on cattle and sheep burping and peeing, a world's first to tackle climate change, will come into force in 2025 but farmers in the country have criticised the proposal, Al Jazeera News reported.

 

The main lobbying organisation for the sector, Federated Farmers, claimed that the tax would "rip the guts out of small-town New Zealand" and have an impact on food production because farms would be replaced with trees.

 

Andrew Hoggard, president of Federated Farmers, said their plan was to keep farmers farming, but he predicted that farmers would sell their land very quickly.

 

Only 5 million people live in New Zealand, but there are 26 million sheep, 10 million dairy and beef cattle.

 

Farm animals produce greenhouses gasses especially the methane from cattle burps and nitrous oxide from their urine. Agriculture, which was previously exempt from New Zealand's emissions trading programme, is responsible for nearly half of the country's overall greenhouse gas emissions.

 

The proposal, according to New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, would make New Zealand's farmers the best not just in the world but for all of humanity.

 

In 2020, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a climate emergency. She said New Zealand's farmers are set to be the first in the world to reduce agricultural emissions, positioning their biggest export market for the competitive advantage that brings in a world increasingly discerning about the provenance of their food.

 

A price for biogenic methane would be determined based on recommendations from the Climate Commission, while prices for long-lived gases like carbon dioxide would be set annually based on domestic emission prices for other sectors.

 

The plan will give farmers financial incentives to use technology to reduce sheep and cow burps, and it will reinvest the money they spend on emissions into the industry.

 

By 2050, the government promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. A commitment to reduce farm animal methane emissions by 10% by 2030 and up to 47% by 2050 is a part of that plan.

 

-      Al Jazeera News