Do National's election plans hint that they're just sticking to central govt policy?
Why is it so easy to 'harness biotech' & spend $495 million on speculative science for 'mitigation', & so hard to fund complex open-systems science for agriculture?
That National could so blithely announce it is deregulating biotech, suggests that National is counting on legacy media/central governments pervasive ideology that technical innovation has all the answers. But it’s much bigger than that.
Listen: Interview on Reality Check Radio:
Now climate change is the war we must wage, with a clarion call of science funding for biotech to,- get this: accelerate the mitigations.
New Zealand’s economic plan includes:
‘$400 million to accelerate development and uptake of agricultural emissions reduction technology.’
Never mind that agricultural emissions reduction technology is essentially a speculative science. The first thing the government has done is establish a joint venture - to ensure the Crown and its joint venture partners patents benefit from IP/royalties. The second step is then accelerating uptake to make sure farmers/growers purchase and use the tech. Possibly with a bit of regulatory persuasion. Which might help with ROI.
BTW: ‘Mitigations’ is climate change wordspeak for technology (and royalties).
We’re accelerating the mitigations, and then, we presume, farmers must accept the mitigations. I am yet to see a single policy document place a caveat on the mitigations. Such as that mitigations (i.e. the technology) must not compromise the long-term productivity and health of a stock unit... I presume government officials haven’t paid a vet bill lately. Farmers should be able to pay their mortgage.
The May 2022 New Zealand Government White Paper lays out the plan:
Te hau mārohi ki anamata
Towards a productive, sustainable and inclusive economy
AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND’S FIRST EMISSIONS REDUCTION PLAN
Yet, as the document acknowledges,
The most promising mitigation technologies are several years away from use on pasture-based systems (eg, methane inhibitors), or are still in an early stage of research (eg, a methane vaccine).
New Zealand’s National Party probably hope that by Harnessing Biotech – they will communicate that they are sciencey. I.e. that they are tech savvy and cool. But they’ve shown their cards, they’re really only reflecting central government agenda. They’re speaking for the IP owners, not for farmers and growers.
This Substack briefly draws attention to the problems and contradictions in Nationals biotech plan. Yes, it is rambly, but to arrive at a maxim of truth we have to go through a type of maze. Perhaps this information might assist to demonstrate how the War on Carbon corrals science research away from necessary research and towards patent owners. This piece also highlights how New Zealand has already been speculating on GE for decades, but appears to have little to show for it.
MBIE’s current science system discourages some forms of science–
Many clever and well-considered research proposals for ag research continue to go unfunded because the funding panel can’t see a potential to develop IP, the research is too interdisciplinary, and they can’t understand if it unless it fulfils norms of excellence.
Persistent central government/legacy political party failure to recognise that MBIE’s control of the science system produces too many political and financial conflicts, rendering it an unsuitable and inappropriate Ministry for oversight of the science system.
The convention of prioritising research that will result in an invention. But somewhat contradictorily, after decades of biotech research, there are no cost benefit analyses to demonstrate benefit.
Apparent double standards. Science doesn’t get funded because there is no proof of benefit, but much science that does get disproportionately funded doesn’t have to demonstrate benefit.
The steering away of research from pollutant chemical/biotech monitoring and research - through policy and underfunding. It’s evident environmental pollutant monitoring & R&D contradicts the principles and priorities of the big tech/media/pharma/chemical industries who so often partner with government institutions in research, and who are parties to trade agreements.
The latest irony - an NZ EPA who refuses to monitor toxic chemicals which are banned elsewhere, is now excitedly stockpiling DNA information.
Science that is discouraged and difficult to secure funding for sits in sharp contrast to the waterfall of $495 million for agricultural emissions reduction technology for climate mitigation. Farmers and growers have put up with the systemic failure of the science system to support farmers and growers with resourcing for real grunty down-to-earth science for decades.
$56 billion in exports in agriculture. $495 million in speculative research for marginal changes to sheep and cow farts. Go National.
In New Zealand, 2023, there is all the money in the world for patentable technologies, (ooops, mitigations), but not for the science New Zealand desperately needs.
NATIONAL’S BIOTECH PLAN: MIRRORS GOVT.NZ AGENDAS
National have released some election plans. They’ve released a biotech plan ‘Harnessing Biotech’ – but not a science plan. When you look at their biotech plan, it synchronises beautifully with central government direction. Which (contrary to the findings of the Royal Commission) is ultimately to deregulate biotech. Why? As I have discussed, there’s $400 million+ in the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) directed to agricultural emissions technology. The money is in the kitty, and I bet every genetic engineer in town knows about it.
The National Party initiatives complement central government policy:
Getting back to farming - cuts red tape but fails to support farmer/growers with science and research.
Reducing Agricultural Emissions – as we will discuss, focusses financial resources from the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) predominantly on methane and nitrogen and ignores complex systems.
Harnessing Biotechnology - Is where the bulk of science elites looking for funding that will result in ‘mitigations’ or, mor familiarly, patents and royalties to the joint venture partners. Funding will come from the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF)
Note: National haven’t yet set a science policy that might demonstrate how biotech might fit within the greater science enterprise. It’s important to understand this central government CERF $400+ on agricultural emissions alone - dwarfs really important science that keeps not being funded.
National’s biotech policy plans to:
1). End the effective ban on GE and GM in New Zealand.
My comments: Firstly, this is misleading. There is no effective ban. Biotech research and trials have to be registered and there is a high bar for open air trials. Companies cannot automatically release product into the environment. Contained laboratory based (such as in vitro) research is under no such constraints.
When it comes to our ‘outdated biotech laws’ the top scientists mooting deregulation, including Royal Society scientists, consistently never highlight the failures of the New Zealand government to adhere to the recommendations of the Royal Commission, they never discuss risk nuances; and they never discuss the fact that they don’t do ROI’s to understand benefit of GE research. Putative!
2). Create a dedicated regulator to ensure safe and ethical use of biotechnology.
My comments: Unbelievably, National anoint MBIE – the Ministry for economic growth and innovation as the regulator. MBIE love technology. You think this is an appropriate choice for a regulator? I presume they would then be funded from industry, a la regulatory capture mode, as is the fashion.
This is hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. The New Zealand government have systematically failed to put in place important measures requested following the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. Stewardship of biotech is really important but often the experts are invariably the people with the political and financial conflict of interest. The Royal Commission attempted to remedy the ‘who watches who’ governance problem with a three-pronged approach. It recommended the establishment of a Parliamentary Commissioner on Biotechnology, a Bioethics Council and a biotechnology strategy (p.342). None of the institutions are in place in 2023.
The McGuiness Institute stated in An Overview of Genetic Modification in New Zealand 1973–2013: The First Forty Years:
‘the framework that the commissioners designed to secure effective public policy decisions in the future has not been implemented.’
We currently have genetically modified crops imported as feed for livestock, but the government have failed to research, register, and recognise this product.
…and now National suggest MBIE as regulator. Did MBIE whisper in Chris’s ear?
3). Streamline approvals for trials and use of non-GE/GM biotechnologies.
My comments: There’s enormous industry pressure to deregulate by excluding some technologies and techniques/processes from regulatory oversight. Of course! (We’ve observed the manufacture of consent in our legacy media for some time).
It might be inconvenient, but it is the duty of our government to protect the public interest. We don’t know what new processes are around the corner. Therefore, precautionarily, all must be declared. This is good because many unanticipated problems continue to arise with older techniques.
Another big problem is scalability. As it becomes easier to do engineering/editing, more changes can be made. With more scientists making more changes; and releases occur more frequently, the scalability is not just merely a benefit for laboratory scientists. What also scales up is the potential for adverse effects in the environment, months and years after the altered genes are released into the environment.
For more information on biotech and risk, please check out PSGR’s 2023 Report.
National’s strapline ‘harnessing biotech’ is nothing less than an oxymoron. They can’t say they’re harnessing biotech because firstly, in most of the world biotech releases are out of control - they’ve exceeded the capacity of regulators and governments to steward. There’s insufficient regulation, so citizens of countries do not understand to what degree the food and medicines they consume are biotechnologies, and what the potential downsides, or off-target effects of those technologies can be.
National's agriculture policy dovetails with government deregulation and emissions reduction plans. By deregulating biotech, using climate emergency as a Trojan horse, the gates are down for all manner of biotechnologies that have the potential, as much as industrial chemicals, to pollute not only New Zealand’s soil and water, but indigenous species and valuable export products.
New Zealand and Europe have been outliers – where biotech research and release must be registered and approved. We’ve missed nasty bullets – out of control giant weeds and ‘volunteer’ soy, corn and other cropping species, that are now weeds because they’re resistant to the dominant herbicides. Our media won’t discuss that.
National’s trope of appealing to the agricultural sector that biotech research will lift agricultural productivity is pure speculation. USA is deregulated and GE yields have been no better over time than non-GE yields.
However, for the Crown and MBIE and their JV partners, the most important science policy is the policy that might provide patents and royalties. They’re that transparent. It’s colonisation by other means.
WHAT RETURN TO DATE ON CLIMATE/AG RESEARCH?
National pitch that farmers will benefit. But has $60 mill of GE pasture research to date benefitted farmers? (I am attempting to confirm this number). I don’t believe a financial report analysing cost/benefit has been undertaken.
This is my best guess at what it’s been spent on:
2002-2011 Total all programmes (ryegrass & clover) $26.97m
2012-2017 ???
2016 C10X1603 Forages with Elevated Photosynthesis and Growth $11.5m
2017 HME ryegrass $25 million over 5 years. MBIE, DairyNZ…
Was 2016 C10X1603 included in the $25 million total?
C10X0815 - 'Exploiting Opportunities from Forage Plant Genomics' valued at $10,368,889.
How much has gone to GM Forages High ME - Core 50210x01?
This 2017 report also sheds some light on current funding pathways:
Most of this money seems to have been ‘invested’ in just 2 species of high metabolisable energy pasture grass, at exactly the time that farmers are pivoting to broader mixed pastures. Farmers are crying out for long term research for mixed forage by region, climate and ag-sector, but because the science system is decoupled from real farmers and growers… and mixed forage doesn’t carry the promi$e of IP there’s peanuts for it. Without ROI analyses - it all seems to be speculative.
My key point, this is just $60 mill - but it’s about to be upgraded to $400+ million.
National are sending out a ‘we’re sciencey and businessy message’ without doing the mahi. How much money has been invested in biotech in New Zealand?
Keep in mind that there is no evidence anywhere in the world, in the massive countries with billions$ invested - that climate change policy and biotech come out with safe and appropriate tech for the good of the planet.
Does the broader agricultural community want deregulated biotech? If you dive into the productivity commissioner’s consultation, and I have, you can see that there was no urgent push by New Zealand agriculture to deregulate biotechnology. In fact, our kiwifruit, apple and pear, beef and lamb, and avocado producers recognise that consumers trust New Zealand, simply because we don’t have the record of genetically modified crops that have now tainted the US food supply.
JOINT VENTURES TO ‘ACCELERATE THE MITIGATIONS’
Ultimately the National Party’s election plans synchronise perfectly with long term central government agendas. National’s policy plan reflects the central government economic plan to produce a high wage low emissions economy:
‘We are investing $2.9 billion from the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to achieve our Emissions Reduction Plan. This includes a $600 million increase to the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) Fund, and close to $400 million to accelerate development and uptake of agricultural emissions reduction technology.’
Because guess what, the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) is going to directly reduce emissions. The policy goal:
The sooner tools are ready for farmers the sooner we move on our goal of biogenic methane reduction of 10 percent by 2030 and 24 to 47 percent by 2050.
Methane is bad (globally, enteric methane emissions from ruminants comprises 18% of total emissions from anthropogenic sources) and we’re going to fix it through biotech. Will these technologies alter the gut development, feed digestion and utilization, & immune response in livestock animals over the longer term?
Our Ministries and Agencies couldn’t discuss this knowledge if their lives depended on it. But ‘we’ can publicly discuss methane research as if the only endpoint is lower methane. FFS.
This is because, ultimately as the trope goes, agriculture is really bad for climate. This is the key message, hammered into society. Forget all the other crap that is non-essential to human health and life that is imported and used in New Zealand– the junk food, the impulse purchases; built-in obsolescence designed into mobile phones, whiteware, digital meters and recording devices, the latest iteration of just about anything that is designed to be out-of-date or defunct in 3.5 years. They don’t count. They’re not in scope.
What’s even stranger is Treasury (who, since legislation changes in the middle of covid, have become a political player) has linked up with the Ministry for the Environment to produce a Climate Economic and Fiscal Assessment 2023. Wow! Why have they never linked up to identify risk from pervasive pollution, the cost of mental health from deficient diets… and so on. But now… climate change?
Treasury are totalling up Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) $495 million in budget or agricultural emissions reduction- but who gets it? How can they total up so much money without transparency in how this money will be allocated?
4 years of funding. 2022/2023 baseline $38.4 million; 2023/2024 forecast $75.09 million; 2024/2025 forecast $134.23 million; 2025/2026 forecast $247.73 million; The total comes to some $495 million.
The War on Carbon effectively displaces all other priorities. It’s farmers and growers, small business and citizen behaviour - not large predatory corporations, or addictive or toxic products and built-in obsolescence, - that must be targeted to save the climate.
The golden techno-salve for 3 decades has been innovation - and climate technology is the new kid in town. What is in scope are mitigations for carbon. Mitigations is the new term for innovations, aka technology.
Climate change ‘mitigation’ rhetoric, has replaced the innovations for economic growth rhetoric.
Never mind the taxes and costs to farmers who already operate on marginal returns, and the extra paperwork. Forget that our farmers are producing high quality, safe and nutritious food - compared to junk food and built in obsolescence. The societal, cultural, economic and nutritional benefit of whole food agriculture is not in scope.
The .govt.nz page ‘Reducing Emissions from Agriculture’, directs the reader to ‘Find out about reducing agriculture emissions in the emissions reduction plan.’ Chapter 13, Agriculture - from the May 2022 White Paper.
(Forestry is in a different category from agriculture, and animal agriculture appears to be the key technology R&D focus within agriculture).
It’s pretty clear this agricultural emissions reduction technology science will be disconnected from any form of systems science that might look more broadly within each agricultural discipline (i.e. horticulture, cereal, arable, dairy, meat protein).
Will $400 million directed to scientific research for agricultural emissions reduction technology (AERT) in the next 5 years reduce biogenic methane reduction by 10% by 2030?
Do you know who the key players are? What their financing is? What reports have been provided? What income is expected?
Is the cost worth the investment, when we have so many other challenges?
Note: Because the money is for agricultural emissions reduction technology, it’s not for agricultural research to support farmers and growers in, for example times of drought; or to improve soil structure or management to prevent loss of topsoil in a storm event. Nor mixed forage research to identify optimum nutrition, productivity and soil carbon. Agricultural systems such as agroecology which reduce dependency on fossil fuels, are not in scope. Agroforestry is not in scope. This is why you won’t find any policy papers discussing the potential for dietary supplements such as seaweed to reduce methane. They’re specifically talking about technology. Seaweed is not patentable.
After 30 years of chasing innovation New Zealand science policy, and the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and its’ predecessor, have created path dependencies in the elite scientists that can exploit innovation-centric policy and secure funding.
That’s why we don’t see broader open-ended research as I have just described.
Note: Emissions reduction concerns our industries – not our consumption of offshore product that is unnecessary for human thriving. So imported product where most industrial feedstock is oil-based is not our problem. Those big junk food, chemical producers and device producers can simply invest in our forests to offset our emissions. Yet the scope of what we can talk about in climate – directs us to critically eye our farmers who are price receivers, selling commodity products in systems where we never talk about how large corporations and industry interests can control prices. Farmers must also contend with increasing input costs (where the sellers are also large corporations); and with historically high mortgages and often marginal incomes. But farmers are our big problem.
All indications are of a downstream coup, where small New Zealand owned farmers/growers are bought out by large offshore owned interests, who have the stretch to navigate tight price environments that are made far worse by government policy (including deficient science research, climate change regulations and interest rate hikes).
What is important in the scheme of things? How do we protect small business?
International agreements, and global oligarchies, relationships of Treasury with international banks, and a captured media direct our gaze to greenhouse gases. These economic, social, and political pressures direct us away from stewardship of soil, nutritional and immune health and environmental harms. They direct society to ignore the persistent administrative, financial and social pressure that drives farmers off their land, and that drives that land into the arms of corporate holdings.
In this gap, the marginal benefit of methane mitigations is what we must prioritise.
In comparison to $495 million agricultural emissions reduction technology, it’s insane how little we spend on complex systems science to solve biggest agricultural problems.
The Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Fund was the peak funding source for 5 years. Highest annual appropriation appears to have peaked at $72.78 million with total appropriations via the SFF Future Fund only $226.83 million over the 5 year period 2019-2024. Our Land and Water is only budgeted at $4 million this year.
In contrast, this Treasury document reporting current and future budget allocations for the CERF, on page 6 shows that Agriculture Emissions Reduction totals for
Meanwhile, $495 million has been set aside for Agriculture Emissions Reduction research over a four year period.
2022/2023 baseline $38.4 million
2023/2024 forecast $75.09 million
2024/2025 forecast $134.23 million
2025/2026 forecast $247.73 million
My calculations from the Treasury document put the total at some $495 million.
Where is the funding for open-ended agricultural systems research?
I don’t know and I’ve asked Damien O’Connor where it might be.
The government talks about ‘Te Taiao’ and ‘wellbeing of the natural world, at the heart of what we do’. But the stench of hypocrisy taints this wordsmithing. Decades long failure to monitor - and provide open ended scientific resourcing to understand the environmental, cultural and economic drivers of pollution and animal and human disease. Capture of science funding under MBIE.
It is the same neglect for agriculture. Soil carbon and commensal microbial and invertebrate communities are key to nutrient takeup. Soil carbon stocks are protected through integrative agriculture – such as agroecology and regenerative management patterns. The Government’s First Emissions Reduction Plan ‘Towards a productive, sustainable and inclusive economy’ (May 2022) briefly mentions soil, but it’s not a serious contender for emissions reduction research. The soil bit, is to sound environmental. But it’s not where the science funding is.
Our elite scientists won’t talk about these issues, as for decades now, science policy has directed them away from them.
A GLOBAL LEADER (THAT’S THE DREAM)
We don’t have a soil institute in New Zealand that can drive complex research across the agricultural sector. We don’t have an institute with resources and scientific freedom to monitor non-greenhouse gas pollution.
But we do have a New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC), which has been operating from the 1990's onwards. I've never seen an analysis of funding return, have you?
Funded by MPI, managed by MPI. The NZAGRC is funded by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) via its Primary Growth Partnership fund and is a partnership (non-financial) of nine New Zealand research organisations: AgResearch, DairyNZ, Landcare Research, Lincoln University, Massey University, NIWA, PGgRc, Plant & Food Research, Scion.
In 2009 New Zealand had established the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA).
It’s clearly evident NZPol wants to be globally relevant in this arena.
I suspect that at the heart of this, some key elite has proposed to the government that we are going to Do Well and Be Important, and then the royalties will come... Because it is evident that New Zealand is pitched as a Big Player.
GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES FOR CLIMATE ‘MITIGATION’ AG-TECH
The First Emissions Reduction Plan (May 2022) sets out the vision for agriculture in Chapter 13. Key actions concern (Focus area 1) pricing emissions; (Focus area 2 ) accelerating ‘new mitigations’ i.e. technologies; (Focus area 3) supporting producers to make changes (which always exclusively concern climate actions, not actions within a given farming ecosystem); and (Focus area 4) transition to lower-emissions land use and systems.
The vast bulk of millions dedicated to agriculture appear to be directed towards technology R&D to: Accelerate mitigation technologies.
We presume the $400 million of AERT fits in top left – because it concerns development of technology.
It’s no secret that central government, despite 20 years of research producing no solid evidence envisage New Zealand as a technology leader in agricultural climate change mitigation.
Have they asked the farmers and growers who are the foundations of the economy? I doubt it. The references below in Focus area 2 do not contain sufficient information to support the claim of an evidence base for the investment of $200 million.
Regarding science funding for Focus area 3 and 4, transition to lower-emissions land use and systems, the First Emissions Reduction Plan shows us how little science and research funding is dedicated to anything but tech development. The government struggles to see integrated, systems based agricultural research as anything other than a nod to sustainability (page 265).
The Government will continue to invest around NZ$40 million per annum via the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures co-investment fund, with a number of initiatives expected to have a focus on sustainability.
Based on the past 20 years of research policy, we’ll see that researchers will be trapped by funding constraints - if the research is too broad it won’t be ‘climatey’ enough - but if it is ‘climatey’ - it won’t address deeper drivers that increase productivity and resilience over time (remembering that being drought tolerance isn’t really in ‘mitigations’ scope.
What makes this sort of research even more difficult, is that the same Crown Research Institutes that are doing this sort of work, AgResearch and Plant & Food, (and to a much lesser extent Manaaki Landcare) - have pervasive political conflicts of interest, as they work extensively in public private partnerships with the corporate sector.
These corporate relationships can disincentivise public good work, which might contradict the priorities of industry partners. The government policies also disincentivise cross-sectoral interdisciplinary research.
CASE STUDY
But farmers are sick and tired of being told the same old bullsh*t. They know there is no institute researching the latest international science in soil and nutrient take-up (for example) and feeding this information back to farmers. They know they’re faced with red tape and rules, such as reducing synthetic nitrogen, but the government is a big empty void when it comes to answers.
A recent conversation with a long-time dairy farmer demonstrated how farmers understand that once the DSIR closed down, and extension services stopped, that they were left high and dry. Industry associations stepped into fill the void, but ultimately, their funding is for short term, urgent issues particular to their sector.
Farmers and growers understand that they are poorly served by New Zealand’s science system. Recent higher payouts had given this dairy farmer the courage to move away from the Ravensdown/Ballance duopoly, learn about pH and get his catiron-exchange right. He was excited about what he was seeing on his farm, and his tone of voice indicated he felt betrayed by a system that had left him poorly informed for so long.
What was he seeing? No downed cows, no milk fever. But he also saw life in his paddocks that showed him there was more going on. He’d learnt that not only would too much synthetic nitrogen suppress growth, it suppressed beneficial insect life. He could see the cowshit ‘breaking down because of the bugs working because the pH is right.’
It was mid-winter, a time when he would normally start putting nitrogen fertilser on the paddocks, but the growth was good and he knew he could push out fertilising for a few weeks. Maybe the cowshit breaking down was helping.
He couldn’t believe it - effortlessly he’d shifted from 200k nitrogen to 120k.
He felt betrayed by the system. He’d been tentative to change away from ‘normal’ practices. Because his major information streams weren’t doing this.
What’s bloody stupid, is that this information could have been led by New Zealand, but our parochial, genetics focus, our fragmented siloed science system has steered us away from this research with most agricultural research dedicated to tech development. There’s no research centre for soil and nutrition.
As far as my dairy farmer is concerned, the information coming from big Fert and DairyNZ hadn’t changed in 20 years, they’re
‘spitting out the same old shit from 20 years ago’.
He sees DairyNZ as helpful when it comes to staff management and contracts, while he sees MPI as just interested in regulations and biosecurity. The younger staff at the fertiliser duopoly look at the manual from 20 years ago to give advice on winter feed budgets, and don’t adjust for location and climate. I asked about information from the milk purchaser - that’s just where the cheque comes from.
This is New Zealand’s outdated, ad hoc informational system for agriculture. We’ve had millions spent on a specific varieties of ryegrass, lolium perenne, that doesn’t do that well in marginal land. Meanwhile, excellent research like Pablo Gregorini has recently done, is as scarce as hens’ teeth. Because it all too often, doesn’t fit the funding scope.
City dwellers are well aware of the synthetic nitrogen contaminating fresh water, and the struggle farmers have to shift away from high synthetic nitrogen regimes. They’re less familiar with a science system that is so corrupted that the basic stuff has been neglected for 30 years.
So it’s all the farmers’ fault.
GREENHOUSE GAS RESEARCH CENTRE
Most Kiwi’s don’t know about the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC). The NZAGRC funding history page, states that research into agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand has been provided since the 1990’s, however this was formalised in 2009 through a
‘partnership between the leading New Zealand research providers and the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium (PGgRc). From 2009-2019, we received $48.5 million to develop and oversee a research programme focused on novel agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation solutions.’
This funding would cease June 2025.
The PGgRc Factsheet outlines that in 2009, New Zealand had established a Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA) to find global solutions to mitigate agricultural GHG emissions. The PGgRc and the Government agreed that the PGgRc would commercialise all intellectual property generated by enteric methane vaccine and inhibitor research.
The Government commits an additional $20 million funding to ‘its contribution to the GRA’.
However, while the GRA states that they work to bring ‘countries together to find ways to grow more food without growing greenhouse gas emissions’. However it appears that the work is exclusively based around soil carbon and development of technologies, rather than bringing in broader scientific approaches which might include, for example, better management of minerals to facilitate better nutrient uptake and more efficient, drought tolerant and healthy pastures. The March 2023 New Zealand Agricultural Climate Change Conference lacked any direct focus on such issues.
However, it is very difficult to understand the Agriculture Emissions Reduction (AER) (see page 6) funding processes and policy information.
The Centre for Climate Action on Agricultural Emissions grandly states ‘The centre will help lower agricultural emissions’.
Budget 2022 allocated $338.7 million over 4 years to strengthen the role of research and development in getting new tools and technology to reduce on-farm emissions to farmers quicker.
It includes AgriZeroNZ, a new public-private partnership, and the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre.
As part of the joint venture the Government will work alongside agri-business leaders ANZCO Foods, Fonterra, Rabobank, Ravensdown, Silver Fern Farms and Synlait.
Partners have made an indicative funding commitment that will rise to around $35 million a year by 2025. This will be matched by the Government and will see around $170 million invested over the next 4 years.
The Centre for Climate Action on Agricultural Emissions (CCAAE) seems to have around $40 million directed to it:
$2.2 million to increase our supply of low methane rams through genetic selection, introducing more low methane traits into the national sheep flock (joint venture with Beef & Lamb supplying $2 million).
$6 million in urgently needed greenhouse gas measurement equipment and infrastructure.
$350,000 to build on the current research programme into methane vaccines, which trigger antibodies that suppress methane in animals.
$200,00 for plantain research
$11.7 million towards greenhouse gas testing including 12 respiration chambers which allow researchers to measure and monitor changes to methane emissions in individual cows.
$7.8 million towards Ruminant Biotech CALM programme
But my three key questions here are –
1. Will we keep New Zealand farmers and growers on farms?
2. Will we retain per unit productivity? And:
3. Where and who is the other $300 million being directed to?
But when did you hear National front a press release and talk about this?
The policy content – the discourse frames the policy scope.
Judging from the absence of investigatory research into what and how the $400+ million is spent, I’m suspecting that the primary aim is divining early on in the piece, just who will realise the financial benefits. This is why joint ventures seem to be the biggest part of the operation, in the early stages of setting up the CERF. The imagined patents and benefits when the emissions tech goes gangbusters globally.
When it comes to agricultural emissions reduction technology, we can see from the First Emissions Reduction Plan where Government think the research funding should go to.
As the case study above demonstrates, a victim of decades long obsession with genetics and technology, our science enterprise is captured by structure and function. Our so-called intelligence is directed towards applied science, and to industry relationships. As long as we decide on the applied science and industry relationships using processes that are inclusive, it’s all fine.
We have decades of institutional neglect of human, agricultural and environmental health because science policy is captured by MBIE. Universities and CRI’s are corralled through policy into pursuing speculative tech solutions that promise patents and royalties, and into commercial research relationships and joint ventures to pursue this research. With all the large funding avenues directed to speculative research, the important grunty research is left on the back burner.
Screw the costs to farmers and growers as they provide stop-gap measures in challenging environments; screw the nutritional drivers of mental health that are persistently ignored and sidelined by pharmaceutical band-aids and the persistent pressure to freshwater from chemical emissions. Because they are out of scope.
That’s why our academics and researchers can harp on about climate change. That is politically acceptable. It’s ‘in scope’. You won’t be called an anti- or a greenie if you harp on about climate change. Discourse on climate change is the proxy for environmental awareness in New Zealand.
The term ‘emissions’ normally refers to greenhouse or bacterial or nutrients such as nitrogen. The term ‘emissions’ in legislation, predominantly concern greenhouse gas emissions, and less commonly, nutrient emissions. There is no scope in legislation and policy for emissions (monitoring, research, regulation) to concern industrial, pharmaceutical and agricultural pollutant emissions.
Many scientists may privately consider as 2022 Nobel Laureate Dr John Clauser has stated, that ‘key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times’. They may wish to speak up and say – ‘I believe our science research budget is misdirected to climate change, and fails to address key human and environmental risks that are long neglected and desperately require resourcing’ - but they don’t want to be smeared as anti-climate change. I can only state this because I am not affiliated with a university.
(I can express hesitancy that our science enterprise is misdirected, while still expressing concern about the work conditions and pollution from extraction and mining activities; and the problem of particulate matter in cities from combustion engines.)
FAILING FARMERS & GROWERS
When we look to supporting producers to make changes, there’s no awareness of the complex demands of farm ecosystems. In the void, emissions reduction concerns reporting mechanisms and best practice synthetic fertiliser management – there’s no scope for changing mineral applications and shifts in management style that are broader.
The below image demonstrates how officials narrow their consideration within the scope of methane and nitrogen, and the future potential of technology. This is why a cap on synthetic nitrogen, and then ‘increasing the proportion of nitrogen fertilisers applied that have been modified to reduce emissions, for example, urease inhibitors, nitrification inhibitors and slow-release nitrogen fertiliser products’ (page 262) doesn’t tend to take into account greater uncertainties farmers face. There’s no scope in climate-science rhetoric for broader soil/nutrient/mineral/biomass interactions.
We can see from this information that the government envisages that the key mitigations will be ‘methane inhibitors’ and a ‘methane vaccine’.
Extension (or farm advisory) services have been funded, but they’re short term and based on funding catchment groups and ‘promote good on-farm practices and sustainable land management, and encourage positive environmental outcomes.’ The current phase has only extends to supporting 5,000 farmers. It’s unclear to what extent this funding is continuing. They’re completely unrelated to science extension services which broadly served farmers and growers, and then fed ideas back into the science community.
It’s also evident that the government maintains a tight grip on what farmers can be advised (WTF). Current funding is
‘limited to the making of contributions to farm consultancies capable of delivering integrated farm plans as required by the Minister of Agriculture and in accordance with government approved criteria and guidelines.’
Government approved criteria and guidelines do not step to soil management and integrated nutrition. It’s out of scope.
It’s easy to believe other initiatives might support farmer/grower knowledge, such as the integrated farm planning system, however this revolves around people management, biosecurity, animal welfare and greenhouse gases. It’s not based on enhancing productivity to reflect local conditions. It’s a reporting system, and I’m not sure what the benefit is. There is no doubt that current regulatory requirements are overly onerous, it’s easy to understand that central government policy planners have never spent a day on a farm.
But what we can see is there is absolutely no support or guidance about soil, nutrition (as opposed to nutrient) and weed management. MPI’s info-graphic is quite clear on this.
IT’S ELECTION TIME BUT THE LEGACY PARTIES WON’T HELP
My dairy farmer case study shows, that in an informed and intelligence science system, he could have made his pivot years ago. But our science-advisory and extension systems aren’t geared towards this sort of research and information exchange (intelligence).
Farmers are required to cap synthetic fertiliser, which is fair enough, but there are no informational pathways to demonstrate how to change farm practice so that when synthetic fertiliser is withdrawn, farmers won’t suffer a productivity decline and fail to pay their mortgage.
The National Party - the farmers party - shows us they’re not really going to help.
Central government will not put $495 million in a kitty for long term research to improve and protect soil health by region and agricultural industry. They will not include in that kitty any form of extension and feedback educational service to farmers.
The $495 mill is for technology – so it won’t be supporting soil management – i.e. complex overlapping practices - to cope with drought or flood events.
The National Party don’t have the words for this.
The rest of the farming/growing system can suck on their tiny little drip fed $40 million Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Fund. This ad hoc funding doesn’t provide a safe place for long-term research where expertise is accrued over the longer term.
The rules are set by central government, MPI and MBIE, and their science policy drives the status quo. What do we get in return?:
- competitive science in silos, laissez faire innovation, science centred innovation (Turner et al 2016).
As scientists tell me, no matter how good or needed the idea is to support agricultural, human and environmental health– will it get funded? If it’s out of MBIE scope, it won’t get funded.
I haven’t touched on the Te Paerangi science consultation, but from what I see, the Wellington Science City ignores agriculture (and is located nice and close to Wellington for all the corporations to meet with the scientists to further all the public private partnerships); and the Future Pathways direction ultimately, I consider, merely summarises MBIE’s own thoughts on where they should ‘go’. Over 880 responses were made to the consultation, but the summary of submissions report failed to give due weight to the issue of public good basic science research that wasn’t being done, because so often, it was out of scope, because it wasn’t applied enough.
The Big Four, Greens-Labour-National-ACT, have far more resources than you, or I or the minor parties, to talk about the challenges to farmers, and the failure of science policy. But they don’t.
They have greater capacity to enquire as to whether – our financial commitment to speculative science for climate change is misplaced. But they don’t.
They could ask whether that same scientific research investment would be better spent harnessing research that helps us move away from industrial chemical agriculture, that seeks to understand how, with 80% of food exported, we could move to better funding homegrown food for all of New Zealanders, while supporting our agricultural producers.
Other questions: What barriers are there for small artisanal food producers? How do we sustain productivity and healthy livestock using less imported inputs? What work should be done to improve robotics technology for weed management? How do we keep New Zealand farms ownership in the hands of Kiwi families? How can we pivot families away from imported ultraprocessed food, and increase the affordability of two healthy meat and vegetables a day? Do we increase our productivity if we consume two healthy meat and vegetable meals a day.
Without a science focus which informs the agricultural sector, National’s promise to farmers to cut red tape is a disservice. Basically, they propose to increase polarisation and make city dwellers distrust farmers more. They state they want to cut red tape as one of their policy platforms. Farmers absolutely and definitely have too much red tape. Some red tape is needed – rules for four-wheelers, sewage and pollutants – other red tape is bullshit and poppycock.
Central government push administrative costs onto small business, that large corporations can absorb easily, but smaller operations can’t. Ultimately, this sets the stage for corporate takeovers.
National also fail to address the other red tape in the room. Farmers will be ordered to do individual greenhouse gas reports and greenhouse gas mitigation plans. Seriously.
At least the royalties will go to the Crown and AgResearch and the other JV partners.
Wow, such a well researched and detailed article about science and the agricultural sector, thank you. How to get this out far and wide? I've shared as much as I can, but hopefully you have sent this to as many relevant organisations as possible?