New Zealand Farmers and the Burp Tax: Balancing the Economy and the Environment

New Zealand’s economy was based on agriculture, which comprised 50 per cent of the country’s national greenhouse gas emissions. In 2008, the government imposed a cap-and-trade system—known as the Emissions Trading System (ETS)—but had excluded the agriculture industry at the time. Recently, the government had been considering imposing a carbon tax at the farm level by 2025 to incentivize livestock farmers to reduce their emissions. However, there was significant backlash from the industry, and the government continued to delay implementing the tax. Would it be possible to propel the country into a new era of net-zero-carbon agriculture without destabilizing the meat and dairy industries?