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October 14, 2022
Māori farmers up for emission reduction challenge
Adam Gifford
Posted On October 14, 2022
Download AudioA leading Māori farmer says the Government’s proposal for farm-level emissions pricing would be better for whenua Māori than the existing emissions trading scheme.
Hilton Collier, the general manager of Ngati Porou’s Pakihiroa Farms Ltd, helped develop the He Waka Eke Nos framework which is the basis for the plan.
He says large areas of Maori land is marginal hill country which is at greater risk of enforced land use change, and Maori struggle to access the capital needed for good land use decisions.
He says the ETS is pushing people to either sell pastoral farming land for afforestation or do it themselves.
“With He Waka Eke Noa we have an opportunity to be strategic in where we choose to be running pastoral systems and we choose to be planting trees to sequester and reduce our carbon emissions. I think we can certainly continue to farm red meat and do it fairly profitably and we can find mechanisms to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions although in the short term there is no doubt it will be much more challenging,” Mr Collier says.
Hilton Collier says Maori owners are able to make longer term decisions about their land use practices than other farmer because they need to take a multi-generational approach.
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