Stats NZ excitedly sent me their Agricultural production statistics: Year to June 2023, with the following highlights:
Key facts for this release
At 30 June 2023, the number of:
- beef cattle was 3.7 million, down 4 percent from 2022
- sheep was 24.4 million, down 3 percent from 2022
- dairy cattle was 5.9 million, down 1 percent from 2022
- deer was 742,000, down 7 percent from 2022.
During the year ended 30 June 2023, the area of:
- wheat harvested was 40,500 hectares, a decrease of 6 percent from 2022
- barley harvested was 50,100 hectares, an increase of 4 percent from 2022.
If those percentages are maintained – and between the endless flow of new farming regulations and the $20 billion or so that we’re going to have to pay to foreign nations for Carbon Credits under the Paris Accords if we don’t hit our Net Zero 2030 targets – then the magical effects of compound interest will have drastically reduced our traditional farming industry by 2040.
Good news for Whiskey makers though with that increase in barley, although I’m not sure how widely grown it can be in NZ.
Anyway, I’m sure that National and Labour have plans for encouraging the development of industries that will replace our farming exports, right?
Right?
No Minister 
I hope these stats will improve this year as our coalition Government works hard to remove the pointless bureaucratic straitjacket imposed by the previous government and rendered meaningless by the revised i.e. corrected IPCC findings on methane climate impact.
I wouldn’t bet on that with Luxon in charge.
Walking through my environmental plan with a dairy company rep a few months ago I pointed out the Methane issue and asked if the IPCC change had yet been reflected in the plan.
Nope. Probably not a surprise because the methane and other agricultural GHG emission stuff was developed by … New Zealand.
I imagine the officials concerned a very proud of their world-leading work.
I used to think that economic pain involved in Net Zero would push this whole thing off course, but it would seem not. We are going to have less farming output and much higher energy costs before any revolt happens.
“that increase in barley,”
May just be an indication of expected weather change; Barley will handle cooler, wetter and lower fertility conditions than milling wheat will.
Or could be Australia has had good rain seasons and NZ contracts for wheat are scarce. ……..?