Make your voice heard!
“World leading beef and lamb doesn’t grow on trees!”
We need your help to ensure our farmers can continue to produce the world’s best beef and lamb.
Our farmers are making positive changes. Let’s make sure they’re the right ones.
New Zealand sheep and beef farmers are committed to playing their part to address climate change, improving our waterways and protecting New Zealand’s biodiversity. They’ve already made great strides and while our farmers are up for the challenge of doing even better they are asking for some changes to flawed Government policies and poorly crafted rules.
Farmers in many parts of the country are doing it tough at the moment in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle. Having the right policies in place is now more important than ever so they can quickly get back on their feet.
Why do we need your help?
Sheep and beef farmers are disproportionately impacted by the raft of environmental changes being looked at. Because the Government has tried to do too much too fast, some of the policies are flawed.
The cumulative impact of these policies on our farmers is significant and so it’s vital that we get them right.
We want the Government to press pause on the introduction of any new rules, like Biodiversity and Resource Management Act (RMA) reform and work with farmers to fix the current ones. It also needs to carry out an assessment of the cumulative impact of all these policies.
Support the right changes, for the right reasons, in the right way.
Simple, sensible and practical adjustments will allow sheep and beef farmers to get on with making the right changes.
For the good of our country, we need Kiwis to stand up for sheep and beef farmers and ask the Government to change the following:
Carbon farming
Urgently address sheep and beef farms being converted into carbon farms, by putting limits on fossil fuel emitters offsetting their emissions in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) through planting trees.
Commit to fixing this issue before any price on agricultural emissions is introduced.
Climate change
Recognise and reward farmers for all the trees on their farms that are genuinely sucking up carbon.
Take a cautious approach to the pricing of on-farm emissions because New Zealand is the first country in the world to try this.
Using the latest science, review the methane reduction targets based on a warming approach to ensure agriculture is being asked to do the same as fossil fuel emitters – no additional warming of the planet by 2050.
Biodiversity
Put the Biodiversity National Policy Statement on hold and work with our sector on a practical and fair definition of a Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to ensure that the right areas of our precious biodiversity are protected.
Boost support for farmers protecting our country’s indigenous biodiversity.
Water
Replace the inaccurate map that incorrectly identifies areas that must be fenced to exclude cattle from rivers and lakes with a more effective approach that captures the right areas.
Change the thresholds for requiring freshwater farm plans and ensure the plans are risk and outcomes based, and take another look at the slope rule for winter grazing.
About the campaign.
Kiwis Backing Farmers is a joint campaign by Beef + Lamb New Zealand and 50 Shades of Green. It’s designed to inform all New Zealanders on proposed rules that will negatively impact the environment, our economy and the livelihoods of everyday Kiwis.
We are absolutely not against change.
We want practical changes that work for the environment and farmers.
We need your help to make the Government listen.