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The New Zealand dairy sector is reaching a point where there won’t be too much further increase in the herd, New Zealand ambassador to Ireland Brad Burgess has said.
He told the Irish Farmers Journal at Ploughing 2019 that herd numbers are reaching a natural point in terms of conversions over the last 20 years.
“But then you look to the efficiency and the growth in the sheepmeat sector since subsidies were removed in the 1980s where our herd numbers have fallen by over half, but our production has remained in terms of meat production.
Efficiencies
“That is due to on-farm efficiencies, technological innovation and genetics improving the productivity of the animal on farm.
"There’s clearly opportunity to do that in New Zealand as there [is] in Ireland and the Netherlands,” he said.
Burgess was speaking on a panel which also included Dutch ambassador to Ireland Adriaan Palm and market specialist with the Irish Farmers Journal Phelim O’Neill.
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Focus on the environment and climate
Burgess said there is a real focus and a desire to strike a balance between farming productively and the growing agricultural sector, but doing so in an environmentally friendly way.
“If you look at the water reforms and proposals that are coming out at the moment, obviously a lot of them have connection to agriculture and the impact that agriculture has had on streams and rivers, but it’s not just an agricultural discussion back home.
“It’s a question around how urban development has affected the quality of waterways.
"So it is a wider discussion that we’re having back home, but obviously agriculture sits as a key part of that and while New Zealand waterways are among the most pristine in the world, we do want to correct the direction of travel which has been a rising level of pollution in some of our waterways.
“At the moment, that discussion is going on about how can we look at a fairer allocation of water rights.
"How can we look at an approach to on-farm environmental management that turns that trajectory around and restores those waterways to the types of level that New Zealanders want to see?”
Zero-carbon bill
Water reforms are part of the wider environmental conversation in New Zealand, he said.
“We have a zero-carbon bill in front of the parliament.
"It’s a unique challenge for Ireland and New Zealand, having 49% in New Zealand of our total emissions coming from farm. In Ireland it’s 33%.
“We’re among the most carbon-efficient producers of food in the world, but we do need to look at solutions to bring that carbon footprint down on farm.
The government’s goal was to become carbon neutral by 2050
"We’ve taken the specific approach back home of looking at the agriculture sector through a dedicated lens and making the decision scientifically based to actually separate out the treatment of biogenic methane from CO2.
“The government’s goal was to become carbon neutral by 2050, but it has taken the deliberate decision through a scientific lens that biogenic-methane does not need to meet zero by 2050,” he said.
Burgess said that New Zealand is going through a public consultation on its zero-carbon bill to determine what ambitious, but realistic, measures for farming there are.
“Over the last 20 years in New Zealand, on average, farmers each year have made a 1% reduction in carbon footprint. Historically, that has been put back into production in New Zealand.
“Farmers care for the environment, but consumers are demanding that.
"They are looking at our environmental credentials, they are looking at our food safety credentials, they are looking at our animal welfare credentials and that’s where really important natural assets that Ireland and New Zealand have, for example around our grass-fed, pasture-based systems,” he said.
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