future of food | Deirdre Kent

Repurposing some agricultural land for horticulture has revenue consequences

New Zealand is incredibly dependent on its primary industry sector for revenue so I thought it worth looking at the current situation. If we are proposing that in order to reduce our methane and nitrous oxide emissions, it has export revenue consequences. If we say some appropriate land should be repurposed for growing more plant foods, then it might pay us to look at the revenue we currently receive from our primary sector. Continue reading “Repurposing some agricultural land for horticulture has revenue consequences”

Meat and aviation industries use cute ways to measure emissions

When it comes to telling the public about their emissions, the aviation industry keeps telling us how much their efficiency has improved. That is they can fly further on a certain amount of fuel. But what they don’t tell us is that their capacity keeps increasing so much that overall their emissions increase. The planes are bigger, they have more routes and there are more planes flying. Continue reading “Meat and aviation industries use cute ways to measure emissions”

New Zealand’s agricultural emissions are high

Nearly half of New Zealand’s emissions are from livestock. A shocking 46.1% for the year 2012 as calculated by the Ministry for the Environment. (MfE). A large proportion of this comes from beef and to a less extent sheep. The MfE paper tells us tells us that in 2012 we had 6.4 m dairy cattle, 3.8m beef cattle, 3.1 m sheep and 1 m deer. So a total of 14.3m ruminant livestock. Continue reading “New Zealand’s agricultural emissions are high”