On Feb 22 I was able to attend the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre Annual Conference which was held in Palmerston North. This was the first annual conference as the NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC) only opened last year and so the focus of the conference was on highlighting some of the progress made in this first year. For me it was a wonderful opportunity to find out more about the specific research projects but also to get a better perspective of the role agriculture plays in NZ and also how this fits into government and industry programs.
The morning started with opening remarks from Honourable David Carter, the Minister of Agriculture and then an interesting talk about the globalisation of science which was given by Sir Dr. Peter Gluckman, Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of NZ. John Hutchings from Fonterra (the largest dairy company in NZ) gave a global perspective on GHG emissions from ruminant livestock and outlined some of the work Fonterra was doing to reduce their carbon footprint. It was interesting to note that in terms of carbon emissions in the NZ dairy sector 85% are coming from on farm, 10% from processing and only 5% from distribution. I had always thought distribution would have a fairly large emission footprint but it seems the focus needs to be on reducing emissions at the farm level if we really want to make a large impact.
A good portion of the day focused on the current research of the NZAGRC with Dr. Harry Clark giving an overview of the first year and how the current funding was being allocated. I found it interesting that the centre is 100% government funded with $50 million being allocated over a 10 year contract period. Dr. Peter Janssen from AgResearch updated us on the current work in methane mitigation and did a wonderful job at taking the science of methanogenic genomics and making it understandable to the lay person. Professor Hong Di from Lincoln University spoke about nitrous oxide and specifically the success they have had with DCD, a nitrate inhibitor that can be applied to the soil and has shown rates of over 50% reduction in nitrous oxide emissions from cattle urine patches. I was surprised to learn the level of nitrous oxide emissions from these urine patches. In NZ this is the main contribution to nitrous oxide emissions from the agriculture sector and as most animals (dairy, beef and sheep) are on a free range pasture system the impact is significant. Professor Jacqueline Rowarth from Massey University tackled the soil carbon issue and gave an insightful view on the perceptions and prospects of soil carbon in the NZ context.
The second half of the day consisted of a series of speakers from government and ranged from the more local policy all the way up to international policy. Paul Stocks, Deputy Director General from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests (MAF) outlined some of the challenges NZ is facing in the agriculture sector and what some of the MAF initiatives are. Dr. Gerald Rys, Senior Scientist, Climate Change Group, also from MAF, discussed sustainable land management and the current climate change programme. Laura Hogg, MAF, outlined what the Global Research Alliance on Agriculture Greenhouse Gases is and gave a view of their future goals. This alliance was driven by NZ and was formed to bring countries together to increase food production while decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. Currently 31 countries have joined this completely voluntary alliance, Canada being one of these. This group is not part of the climate change group but is more of a partnership that allows sharing of information and working globally to come up with solutions to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agricultural production. One of the key pieces being you can’t mitigate what you can’t measure, thus one of the focuses being on inventories and measurement of GHG. Jo Tyndall, NZ Climate Change Ambassador, gave us a glimpse at the International Climate Change Negotiations from Copenhagen through Cancun to what is on the table for next year. It was a fascinating look into policy negotiations and frankly if we complain that science is difficult we should probably spend some time in international negotiations! The talks for the day were summarized by Rod Oram in his presentation titled “Food for Thought”.
The day gave me a much clearer picture of agriculture in New Zealand and the large role it plays in GHG emissions. Unlike most other developed countries NZ is still an agrarian primary economy. If you look at pie charts from most developed countries the majority of GHG emissions will come from the energy sector but in NZ the main source of GHG emissions come from the agricultural sector. So for example, in Canada approximately 10% of GHG emissions come from the agricultural sector (number varies depending on source and year of data) while in NZ this number jumps to close to 50%. Meanwhile in 2005 the estimate is that 82% of Canada's GHG emissions came from the energy sector.
In NZ agriculture makes up approximately 50% of the total merchandisable exports and so is a major part of their economy. The market that New Zealand is targeting is exporting high quality food to the mid to high income brackets. Given their small size and their remote island location this can be a challenge but they feel they have the technology and ability to continue to increase food production while decreasing GHG emissions and minimizing environmental impacts. This will be a challenge as they move forward but the agriculture sector does receive strong government and industry support in funding research in these areas (much more so than in Canada). Through-out the conference people kept referring to the estimate that by 2050 the population will have increased to 9 billion and our global demand for food will have doubled. NZ hopes to position themselves to help and supply food globally to this ever growing population.
I could go on and on about agriculture here and the role it plays but I will leave that discussion for another blog. Suffice it to say I found the conference extremely informative and it also gave me the opportunity to meet people from research, government and industry. I plan to follow up with these contacts and hope to further expand my understanding of the complex situation that they face in NZ with GHG and with agriculture in general.
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