The Point of Order blog credited Agriculture Minister Damian O’Connor with delivering a good speech to the International Conference on Agricultural GHG Emissions and Food Security this week.
He told his audience the global community needs more food of a higher quality and with less environmental impact than ever before, and New Zealand, with its low population density and a temperate climate, is ideal for agricultural production. He said:
“Through innovation and impressive productivity gains, helped by the removal of agricultural subsidies and tariffs in the 1980s, NZ can produce more food, more efficiently than ever before.
“We are not a large agricultural producer in global terms; our low population means we export a high proportion of our production. We’re the number 1 dairy exporter in the world, but produce only 3% of the world’s milk. We’re the number 6 beef exporter in the world, but produce only 6% of the world’s beef.
“We live in the South-West Pacific, where our winters coincide with the North’s summers. This means NZ is in a position to supply food to the 90% of the global population who live in the Northern Hemisphere, outside of the North’s growing season”.
In the drive to reduce agricultural emissions, NZ is making a significant investment in research and development. Mr O’Connor drew attention to this:
“In the livestock sector we’ve found promising leads. Working with others, we’ve measured thousands of animals and have been able to identify some that emit lower levels of methane.
“We’ve screened hundreds of thousands of chemical compounds and isolated a handful that have large potential to reduce emissions. We’re undertaking world-leading research to try to develop a vaccine to reduce methane from livestock”.
The Minister continued by noting that the Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change research programme was established
- To help NZ meet international greenhouse gas reduction goals,
- Maintain profitable and sustainable agriculture and forestry sectors, and
- Address the lack of information on the impacts, implications and adaptations needed in the face of a changing climate.
In the decade since its inception more than 150 projects have been funded with $50m from government– some with returns 10 times the original public investment.
But another 2.3 billion people will join the world’s human population by 2050. Feeding them means more food will have to be produced in the next 50 years than in the past 500.
If NZ is to play its part in boosting food production, Point of Order thought it was strange that Mr O’Connor omitted from his speech any reference to the advice Sir Peter Gluckman has been giving the government.
In his final report as the Prime Minister’s chief science advisor, Sir Peter contended NZ must revise its moratorium on genetic modification to access the most promising innovations to reduce agricultural emissions.
The July paper to the PM says farmers can take immediate steps to start reducing agricultural emissions – but for NZ to make meaningful steps it will need to embrace technological innovations.
And the most promising technologies rely on genetic engineering.
Those technologies include transgenic forage plants which reduce livestock emissions, transgenic endophytes which inhibit nitrogen, and GE forestry to accelerate tree growth for afforestation.
The report noted social licence for these technologies does not exist in NZ.
“However, given the progression of science on one hand and a broader understanding of the crisis of climate change on the other, not having a further discussion of these technologies at some point may limit our options.”
A big political question is raised by this: will the Labour-led coalition ignore the advice of someone as eminent as Sir Peter Gluckman and sidestep the use of GM technologies, when clearly they would be the most effective instruments to reduce agricultural emissions while at the same time expanding production of the food the world so urgently will need?
AgScience 