Federated Farmers Submission on International treaty examination of the Paris Agreement
Federated Farmers is supportive of the need to take action to contribute to the global effort to address climate change. Farming is reliant on the climate for the food and fibre that we produce. Public policy should seek action that supports New Zealand’s natural advantages in agricultural production.
The Federation welcomed the successful conclusion of the Paris Agreement in December last year. The priority given to food security and food production, recognises the dual challenges of controlling global temperatures and feeding a growing population.
The Paris Agreement is a high level agreement but provides scope to consider various technical responses. Something that Federated Farmers believes will have a profound effect on the responses expected of New Zealand is the role and value of biological agricultural emissions in mitigating climate change, which has been keenly debated recently.
The Paris Agreement provides new momentum to discussions around this, but also recognises the vital importance of food security and the role agriculture plays in feeding a growing global population.
New Zealand farmers are already among the least emissions intensive animal protein producers in the world, and have been reducing the carbon footprint of our products by 1.2% per year every year for the past two decades. Ongoing improvements in productivity, as well as the investment we have made into research through the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium and the Global Research Alliance, will continue to show that we are playing our part in this global challenge.
It is for these reasons that Federated Farmers of New Zealand supports the Government in its efforts to ratify the Paris Agreement.
For more, see the full submission document