Is New Zealand Moving too Fast on Emission Reductions?

Without breakthrough technologies, new regulations could threaten New Zealand’s pasture-based dairy system.
Without breakthrough technologies, new regulations could threaten New Zealand’s pasture-based dairy system.
(Taylor Leach)

Greenhouse gas emissions have become the target of policymakers everywhere, including those in the world’s major milk-producing regions, but it is unclear whether some of the lofty reduction goals are moving too fast for industries to adjust. The New Zealand dairy industry provides a case in point.

Earlier this year, DairyNZ commissioned a study that found New Zealand milk has the lowest carbon footprint in the world, and DairyNZ Chief Executive Tim Mackle credited the country’s pasture-based system for the accomplishment. However, the country’s new environmental regulations threaten that very system.

According to Sarina Sharp, analyst with the Daily Dairy Report, New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Act is expected to reduce the country’s total livestock numbers, including dairy cows, while existing limits on manure discharges near waterways have already reduced pastureland available for grazing.

Since the Zero Carbon Act was enacted, she says the amount of land dedicated to New Zealand dairy pastures has dropped by 1.5%. “Looming restrictions on emissions also promise to cap New Zealand cattle counts, which have fallen more than 5% since peaking in 2014,” she notes, adding that the timeline for the Zero Carbon Act could be overly ambitious.

By 2030, New Zealand has pledged to reduce biogenic methane—the kind that comes from ruminants—emissions by 10% from 2017 levels, and the Zero Carbon Act calls for further reductions of at least 24% by 2050, depending on how much global progress is made on stemming climate changes.

“If nutritional supplements like seaweed, methane inhibitors, or vaccines fail to become widely available and affordable over the next decade, New Zealand producers will simply have to lower stocking rates and reduce milk production,” she says.

A recent USDA Global Agricultural Information Network report argues that despite the new environmental restrictions, New Zealand milk production could remain stable because dairy producers have an opportunity to significantly improve milk yields. Moreover, the report notes that new technologies, such as methane and nitrification inhibitors as well as a methane vaccine, along with changes in management, including feeding more grain and/or low-emission forages and reducing the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, could all play into reducing emissions while helping increase milk yields.

Sharp agrees that New Zealand producers could indeed significantly improve milk yields, if they were to feed more grain, but a shift away from the country’s pasture-based system would undermine the nation’s progress reducing other greenhouse gas emissions.

“If breakthrough technologies like methane inhibitors or a methane vaccine become affordable and scalable in the next decade, New Zealand could grow milk production and meet its methane emissions targets,” Sharp notes. “But there is a real risk that tools to reduce methane emissions are developed too slowly to meet the goals of the Zero Carbon Act.”

 

 

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