featured in this issue - NZIFST - The New Zealand Institute of Food ...

Pacheuri, who received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 jointly with
US politician Al Gore for their work raising awareness of climate
change.
“This argument has been boiled down in the media and
very much over-simplified,” Silver Fern Farm’s group marketing
manager Glenn Tyrrell says. He attended the World Meat Congress
last September and heard a paper from Dr Pierre Gerber,
one of the authors of the UN Food and Agriculture Association
report called ‘The Long Shadow of Livestock’, which criticised
livestock farming and meat production for emitting 18% of the
world’s greenhouse gas, more than the total transport industry.
“This led to Dr Pacheuri’s extraordinary, reported public
statement that people should eat less meat to reduce global
warming,” Tyrrell says. “In his address Dr Gerber showed that
over one-third of the 18% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
attributed to livestock is created by deforestation of the
Amazon rainforest by the Brazilian meat sector.
“Other significant contributors are intensive grain and fishmeal
feeders. Deduct these from the equation and countries like
New Zealand, with natural extensive grass-fed production, have
a very low level of GHG and yet we are grouped together by
the UN in statements advising consumers to eat less meat.”
Clearly, Brazil has no intention of reducing expansion of
their beef industry through continued deforestation, Tyrrell says.
“So the New Zealand meat industry has established contact with
the FAO and requested isolation by country of livestock carbon
footprints. Global consumers should know that Brazilian beef is
a major contributor to global warming due to deforestation, but
also that New Zealand grass fed beef, lamb and venison has a
very low carbon footprint.
“We hope to work with the FAO on obtaining information
that we can use to highlight our position to global consumers
- ‘reduce global warming - eat New Zealand meat’”.
New Zealand is leading the world on GHG mitigation in
the pastoral sector. For the past five years, the Pastoral Gas
Research Consortium, a cross livestock industry group in New
Zealand, has been working on a range of ways in which to
mitigate this country’s GHG emissions. One of its first results in
the middle of last year was a world-first in research terms, genemapping
one of microbes responsible for producing methane
in the stomachs of cattle and sheep. That understanding should
lead to ways to reduce methane production. Other results will
follow this year.
Adapting for climate change
Climate change is real, its
impacts are real and it’s a matter
now of how we prepare for and
cope with that change, was the
message from MAF senior policy
analyst Trecia Smith at last year’s
MIA conference.
“To be forewarned is forearmed,”
she said.
“The projection for New Zealand
is that the whole country
will become warmer: the west
HamburgS-Attentive-NZFoodMg 10/1/08 will become 7:24 AM wetter Page and 1 the east
Trecia Smith
will become drier,” Smith said.
“In average years, projected changes averaged across the country
are likely to be small, but there is regional variability. On
the plus side, the warmer weather will mean more growing
days and increases in the length of the growing season, but,
in extreme years, the droughts will be worse than have been
experienced before.”
Adaptation to those changes is seen as part of sustainable
development: it has a link with green house gas mitigation and
it means adjusting over time and evolving with information. An
Adaptation Technical Working Group has been set up and has
proposed a five year adaptation programme leading to 2013
and the proposed inclusion of agriculture in the NZ Emissions
Trading Scheme (ETS).
Feedback to the programme indicates that due to greater
awareness adaptation will be a higher priority for adaptableland
managers. They will be using better weather forecasting
tools and business risk models and changing practices to improve
resilience. Issues include changing production systems,
resource management and social/economic factors to take into
consideration, Smith said.
Research must be proactive.
Adaptation of crops and livestock so they can thrive in a
water-limited environment, in a carbon-rich world of different
temperatures and changed pest pressures means that agricultural
research and development needs to be actively working
on climate-change resources, according to Jeremy Burdon, chief
of CSIRO’s Plant Industry Division. Speaking to the Guild of Agricultural
Journalists’ jubilee conference in Wellington last October,
he sees two options for producers/processors: either adapt
at the local scale, or move the farm i.e. adapt at the landscape
scale.
Understanding water availability crucial
Understanding the future availability of water in New Zealand
will be crucial to processors’ and livestock farmers’ ability
to adapt their systems to suit the local environment.
Work is being done by the National Institute of Water and
Atmospheric Research (NIWA) to establish where the right
quality water will be available in the ‘right’ quantities in New
Zealand. Bob Wilcock, principal scientist, aquatic chemistry, another
speaker at the Guild’s jubilee conference explained the
complex interactions between ground-water and surface-water
catchments and then groundwater use and discharge impacts
downstream.
Discharge from dairy farming into groundwater streams
has been under the microscope to date. NIWA and AgResearch
are working with farmers, district and regional councils, MAF,
dairy companies, FRST and others in the ‘Best Practice Dairying
Catchments Project’ to improve streams in Waikato, Taranaki,
Canterbury, West Coast and Southland. The approach is a combination
of monitoring streams, surveying land use and farm
management, defining land-water linkages, isolating key drivers,
developing best management practice and farmer uptake of
the new ideas at regular farmer meetings.
“By simply fencing a stream, you can achieve remarkable
benefits,” Wilcock said.
His predictions for the future are that there will be an increase
in intensity of land and water use alongside an increase
in predictive ability, mitigation and improved practices. “But,
will they balance” he asked.
Time will tell.
MIA NEWS
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February/March 2009
37