Submission on Pricing Agriculture Emissions

As part of our ongoing work supporting clients to manage key challenges and opportunities affecting their businesses, Rabobank New Zealand has made a submission to the Ministry for the Environment on the Government’s proposed framework for pricing agricultural emissions. You can read our submission here.

We have done this after consulting our Client Councils, and also carefully considering the proposals and the impact we believe they would have on our clients, on rural communities and New Zealand’s wider social and economic fabric.

Rabobank believes all New Zealanders have a role to play in reducing greenhouse emissions, whether they live in cities, towns or rural communities. As a country, doing nothing is not an option, but the framework must be fair, equitable and workable.

We continue to support the key principle of individual farms and businesses being held responsible and accountable for their emissions. At the same time, they must also be fully recognised for mitigations they have put in place, including sequestration of carbon that sits outside the ETS.

New Zealand’s farmers should not be made to feel unduly targeted by policymakers with unfair or overly onerous emissions pricing requirements.