Signing Biden’s Methane Pledge a Betrayal of Farmers: Opposition Leader

A photo taken on Aug. 10, 2022 shows cows waiting to be milked on a dairy farm near Cambridge in New Zealand's Waikato region on Oct. 11, 2022. William West/AFP via Getty Images)

The Australian Labor government will have betrayed its election promise to support farmers if it considers signing up to the Biden administration’s global pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent, opposition leader Peter Dutton has said.

This follows comments from Agricultural Minister Murray Watt on ABC Radio on Oct. 13 that the federal government was “consulting with farm groups and individual farmers” about what the impacts would be of signing up for the pledge.

Speaking on the John Laws Morning Show on 2SM Radio on Oct. 14, Dutton said that the federal government considering the pledge was a shocking day for farmers.

“We’ve had since 1991 one of the biggest reductions in methane emissions in the world, more than the United States and other comparable countries. If we’re saying to farmers that we need you to cull your stock or to reduce your numbers to make your farm unviable, then I think that is a shocking day for farmers and for our country,” Dutton said.

Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton MP reacts during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on July 28, 2022. (Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

The opposition leader said that he did not support the methane pledge for the moment.

“I think Australia does a lot in the environmental space—a lot more, frankly, than say China or India does in terms of their own emissions—and sending our country broke or sending our farmers broke is not the solution,” he said.

“I think [Climate Change Minister] Chris Bowen needs to be very clear here because before the election he gave an indication to farmers that he wasn’t going to do this and now he is.”

Government Believes Methane Pledge No Danger to Agriculture Sector

Yet the Federal Minister for Agriculture Murray Watt believes that the pledge will not affect the sector.

He told ABC Radio that the pledge would not lead to a mass cull of cattle in the country, but rather it was an aspirational pledge to bring down methane emissions.

He also said it was supported by industry citing groups such as Meat and Livestock Australia, the Red Meat Advisory Council and others already have commitments in place to reach carbon neutral meat production by 2030.

“One of the things that industry has been saying to me is that they’re actually quite comfortable with these things, especially if government is prepared to provide support for the expanded use of aspargopsis—the seaweed that can help bring down methane,” Watt said.

The Australian agricultural sector is pursuing new technology to address methane emissions with groups such as Meat and Livestock Australia, the CSIRO (the government’s chief scientific body), and James Cook University working together to develop a livestock supplement called FutureFeed—made from aspargopsis seaweed—that is said to reduce methane emissions from livestock by up to 80 percent.

Watt called it a “really exciting opportunity to create a new industry for Australia while bringing down our emissions in our livestock industry.”

Support Industry, Not Regulate It: Farmer’s Representative

Tony Maher, CEO of the National Farmers Federation, said reducing emissions should not be a regulatory challenge but a technological one.

“What we need is continued focus on the technology breakthroughs that will enable us to drive emissions lower while continuing to supply the world with food and fibre,” Maher previously told The Epoch Times.

He said the red meat industry set its sights on carbon neutrality by 2030 and had cut emissions by 53 percent compared to 2005 levels. Maher said the group had already taken steps to develop the Australian Agriculture Sustainability Framework—calling it a “world-first partnership between industry and government.”

His comments come as farmers in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Canada, and Ireland launched protests against government emissions regulations.

Farmers in The Netherlands have protested en masse after the government ordered the agricultural sector cut nitrogen emissions from livestock, according to The New York Times, even via cutting herd numbers or closing farms.

While in New Zealand, Federated Farmers—a lobbying group for farmers with over 13,000 members—denounced the Ardern government’s decision to tax farmers for their emissions.

The envisaged plan aims to cut emissions in dairy farming by five percent and sheep and beef farming by 20 percent. The group lambasted the targets calling them “unscientific” and “pulled-out-of-a-hat” according to an online post on Oct. 11.

“We didn’t sign up for this. It’s gut-wrenching to think we now have this proposal from government which rips the heart out of the work we did,” said Andrew Hoggard, Federated Farmers National president.

“Our plan was to keep farmers farming. Now they’ll be selling up so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute [pickup truck] as they drive off.”