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6:05 am, February 16th, 2023 - 20 comments
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CUT CLIMATE POLLUTION FROM BIG DAIRY
New Zealand’s intensive dairy industry depends on vast amounts of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser to fuel grass growth to feed too many cows. The industrial dairy sector is the biggest source of the climate pollution which drives the climate crisis and increased floods, heatwaves and storms. To date, the Labour-led government has allowed the dairy industry to escape any real regulation, while the rest of us, the environment and future generations, pay the price.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Instead, we can have thriving rural communities where people make their livelihoods farming in a way that keeps our water, land, and climate safe and healthy, through more plant-based regenerative organic agriculture. But we need government action now.
Join our call on the government to take real action to cut climate pollution from NZ’s biggest polluter: industrial dairying.
I call on the NZ Parliament to cut climate pollution from big dairy by passing legislation to:•Phase out the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser•Stop the use of imported feed, like palm kernel expeller•Support farmers to shift to diverse, regenerative and organic farming•Halve the dairy herd by 2030
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Maybe the government could spearhead a campaign to return our dairy conversions into cropping again. And planting those cropping lands with dairy substitutes like oats, for oat milk. And then turn those cropping lands into carbon negative sinks.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2359007-china-can-make-staple-crops-carbon-negative-by-adding-biochar-to-soil/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=2023-02-15-Carbon-negative
The above shows that it can be done.
Will we have ‘government action now’?
Extremely unlikely.
That NGOs like Greenpeace are having to run petitions to 'call on the government to take real action now to cut climate pollution now' tells us that this government has little enthusiasm for real action now, preferring unenforceable, pie in the 50 years away sky, targets.
When even deaths from climate disasters won’t shift the government to take real action to cut our rising emissions, I fear it will take more than a petition to shift them to take real action.
There is promising research in reducing methane per animal by 50% (and thus not just here but worldwide), that and more efficient production per animal might achieve the same.
Farmers should be keeping only the stock numbers their own land can sustain.
And palm kernel should be banned immediately.
Sure, the matter of stock numbers and emissions are somewhat separate. Which is where my comment 3 came in.
Please explain how stock numbers and emissions are "somewhat separate".
Nope. We are overstocked in terms of a range of things: GHGs, soil compaction, soil degradation, nitrogen and other pollutants, biodiversity loss, tree removal, water pollution, water usage, electricity usage… it's a long list.
You cannot make industrial dairy sustainable, it's just not physically possible because the model is extractive not regenerative. Smaller, regenerative farms with less stock might work.
What evidence is there that the land load is 50% overstocked?
A 50% emissions reduction target sure – that might be within reach via less emissions per animal.
I would see that as a separate matter to stock levels.
Not all land is the same, not all land is suited for dairy etc.
that's right, we have insanely stupid levels of dairying on unsuitable land.
You can't separate out emissions from the rest of the environment, because it's the same environment, and all the issues intersect. Fortunately the solutions all intersect as well, which is one of the great beauties of regenag.
Re the numbers, I'm sure that Greenpeace has those figures.
I'm a fan of interest free loans to farmers for the right sort of investment (environmental/transformational) to ensure better land management. A debt repaid on land sale.
That might be more important where rivers are at risk of pollution or underground aquifers of nitrate contamination.
Better protection of productive farmland from urban sprawl also …
There have been HUGE debt mountains built on dairy farming ans the money lenders have a vested interest in the "white gold' continuing to flow to allow interest payments continuing. The first thing thta must be addressed is this debt mountain in a way that does not undermine and collapse the Banking system. The size of this problem is severely underestimated. The other monetry problem is the dependence upon milk exports for much of NZ's export income.
Without addressing these 'elephants in the room' financial collapse looms. More so now with the huge cost of recovery from the floods which will soak up every spare dollar for the next five or ten years – compounded by present ‘Covid’ debts.
And if more farmers move into oat milk, would the resulting scarcity in dairy milk push prices up? Thus attracting more dairy farmers into the death cycle?
There is also the profitability problem.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU2302/S00029/new-report-finds-oat-milk-in-new-zealand-uses-93-less-emissions-than-dairy-but-dairy-still-more-lucrative.htm
A new study released today shows farming oats in New Zealand is much more sustainable than dairy, but dairy is still more profitable.
While the study showed that oat farming is better for the environment than dairy farming, it also showed that dairy farming is still more lucrative, with the straight dairy model offering twice the return of the highest earning arable model.
As well as moving on from dairying we should be looking at forestry practices including
For context:
https://twitter.com/Niamh_OFlynn/status/1625374532600229888
Might it be time for our agricultural industry to concentrate on feeding us instead of creating profits for overseas companies and banks and stuffing up our environment?
It makes me so angry that we’ve been forced to listen to the bullshit freedom morality of those who don’t want to get vaccinated or wear a mask out of consideration,
while the water sweeping over your property full of shit and your dead neighbor, while the road that brought food to your local supermarket is washed out and constantly blocked with landslips and this is just the beginning…no power for three months. No insurance for your property.
The people who are paying aren’t those who knew and stymied the truth.
and worst of all when we could have been leading, using moral pressure and living up to our 100% pure slogan, we’ve picked up fossil award after fossil award…
It was a nuclear free moment without Lange or even Prebble…
Though to be fair without a Cuban missile crisis or the Berlin Wall and without big Norm Kirk leading the way so long ago…
Ha, when here in Northland the roads and power was restored to dairy farmers before anyone else.
Good luck Green peace, but not a snow balls chance in hell. The Dairy industry just got us by the short and curlies