Greens Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons is warning NZ farmers not to get too self-righteous in the belief they are the world’s most efficient producers of food. Fitzsimons told a Federated Farmers National Council meeting the claim about NZ farming having the world’s lowest carbon footprint is “overblown” and there is no real research to back it up. She notes the only scientific comparison has been with the UK and “We simply don’t know how we compare with other countries.” She adds, if NZ farmers keep making such claims, without evidence, they will be challenged on it internationally.

Fitzsimons has also poured cold water on a new claim being made about grass being a carbon sink, which balances out farming emissions, and farmers should get a credit for it. She dismisses this as “scientific bunkum.” While acknowledging grass contains carbon, Fitzsimons says it is part of the carbon cycle where vegetation absorbs and releases carbon from the atmosphere. She adds, “Our short grass pastures are growing on land that was mainly covered with tall forest when the climate was in balance. Perhaps we are lucky that we are not being asked to account for that huge loss of carbon which occurred in order to establish those grasslands.”

Furthermore, Fitzsimons the carbon in grass doesn’t just go back to the atmosphere as CO2, as happens when a tree rots or is burned. Some of it goes back as methane, with 20 times more warming potential than the CO2 the grass absorbed for a short time. But Fitzsimons points out soils can store varying amounts of carbon and in some circumstances the carbon in a soil can be more than in the forest that grows on it. She sees this as a huge opportunity for farmers in future but only when there is a system of accurately measuring and reporting the variations in soil carbon, and when that system is accepted under the Kyoto agreement.

Fitzsimons sees a “green” future for NZ farming where the country produces naturally bred high-sugar grasses which produce less methane, manage water logged soils better to reduce nitrous oxide, make much of the farm’s energy from the manure that currently produces greenhouse gases, with an enhanced organic fertiliser as the residue. She adds, “I see breakthroughs in soil management that enable us to store a lot more carbon in our agricultural soils, whether through biochar as a by-product of farm woodlots or the timber industry generally, or just from more use of composting techniques.”

 Copyright © Media Information Ltd
NZ Energy & Environment Business Week