Industry groups Beef and Lamb New Zealand, Dairy NZ and Federated Farmers organised the rural issues<\/a> debate ahead of next month’s election.<\/p>\n It featured representatives from National, Labour, ACT, New Zealand First and the Greens, but neither Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori nor the Opportunities Party.<\/p>\n Agriculture, forestry and the ‘distorted’ ETS?<\/p>\n A hot topic was the Emissions Trading Scheme<\/a> (ETS) that enabled the carbon farming regime and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n Last month, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton said the “complicated” role of forestry in the “essentially rudderless” scheme and climate mitigation policy generally needed re-imagining.<\/p>\n The scheme was also under fire<\/a> by many farmers concerned about the loss of productive farmland to forestry.<\/p>\n But Todd McClay of National said the Government had improved policy settings to protect productive farmland classes, while respecting property rights.<\/p>\n “This isn’t a fight between trees and farming,” he said.<\/p>\n “It’s about making sure that one people have choice but that a government decision which ends up being a subsidy to grow trees from the carbon market doesn’t change the nature of their decisions.”<\/p>\n He said it had worked to limit new farm-to-forest conversions.<\/p>\n “It’s the first full year that the sale of valuable farmland for conversion to trees has stopped,” he said.<\/p>\n “There will be still some legacy where they’ve got a few years to plant.”<\/p>\n Around 350 farmers listened to the political panel at Mystery Creek near Hamilton on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n RNZ\/Monique Steele<\/p>\n McClay said it will also later review the work to ensure it was working.<\/p>\n Labour committed to developing new rules to limit full farm-to-forest conversions at the debate.<\/p>\n Its agriculture spokesperson, Jo Luxton, said it wanted to review the ETS and forestry’s role in it.<\/p>\n “We will do an urgent review into the ETS because we want to disincentivise planting pine trees just in that capacity,” she said.<\/p>\n The Green Party’s agriculture spokesperson Steve Abel said it would price agricultural emissions under the scheme, if elected.<\/p>\n “We’re the only ones who are going to make the ETS work by taking forestry out of it entirely, so we don’t get the distortion that we’ve currently got and the workaround that this Government’s tried to do which is not sufficient to actually solve the problem.”<\/p>\n NZ ETS carbon auctions have failed to sell any carbon units since December 2024, as of the last auction last month.<\/p>\n Taxes and investments<\/p>\n At the debate, National committed to no new taxes<\/a> for farmers, as did Labour and ACT.<\/p>\n The coalition Government removed agriculture from the ETS and abandoned industry emissions plan He Waka Eke Noa.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Labour’s Luxton confirmed that farms would not be subject to a capital gains tax<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It is a simple, targeted capital gains tax on commercial property and investment properties.”<\/p>\n Mark Patterson of New Zealand First said the pre-election campaign featured a lot about tax.<\/p>\n Heather Du Plessis-Allan of NZME moderated the political rural issues debate.<\/p>\n RNZ\/Monique Steele<\/p>\n “New Zealand First is the only party that’s not talking about tax, we’re talking about an economic plan, how we’re going to actually turbocharge and grow the pie,” he said.<\/p>\n “That’s what dropping the company tax rate is about, to drive the engine room of our economy, those small and medium sized businesses.<\/p>\n He said it would establish a sovereign wealth fund towards the country’s long-term economic plan, and push for continued momentum with the Regional Infrastructure Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n “So we’re not just having to try to cut our way to prosperity, we’re going to invest.”<\/p>\n Abel said the Greens’ wealth, corporate and inheritance<\/a> taxes would only affect a small number of New Zealanders.<\/p>\n “The 46,000 farms in New Zealand, it will touch 2 percent of those farms, so those big corporate farms will be touched by [the wealth tax],” he said.<\/p>\n “Our capital acquisitions tax is only on inheritance over $1 million, excluding the family farm and the family home.”<\/p>\n The Greens would also establish a $150 million Fair Food Fund to expand community-led food security initiatives.<\/p>\n Freshwater quality bottomlines<\/p>\n Luxton said it would take its National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 rules to select committee for further refining.<\/p>\n “We will be a very different Labour Party than we were three years ago. We’ve listened, we’ve acted, we’ve learned,” she said.<\/p>\n “We want to ensure that we have absolutely thriving rural communities, profitable farms, and we want to ensure that we have environmentally sustainable standards as well.”<\/p>\n Andrew Hoggard of the ACT Party said the party wanted catchment-specific freshwater targets, as did the Greens.<\/p>\n “We’ve got to look at each catchment and be going what is the starting point,” Hoggard said.<\/p>\n “We’ve got to ask the question, ‘do we want farming? Do we want towns? Do we want cities; industry working in these catchments?<\/p>\n “These are the things we’ve got to have a methodology around,” he said.<\/p>\n Abel said regulators needed to set reasonable perimeters for activities in each catchment.<\/p>\n “It is not for the government to tell farmers what they can do on their farm,” he said.<\/p>\n “But it is to set the parameters around which how we protect our fresh water, how we protect our ground water, how we protect our drinking water.”<\/p>\n The Greens also proposed lowering the cap for the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers on dairy farms only, from 190 kilograms per hectare at present to 125kgs\/ha.<\/p>\n “We have to manage the stocking rates of dairy cows in certain catchments,” Abel said.<\/p>\n “Frankly, there’s lots of parts of Southland where there should be a heck of a lot fewer cows.”<\/p>\n Furthermore to environmental reasons, Patterson also admitted the party killed the Gene Technology Bill, due to concerns around trade market access in losing the genetic engineering-free status and the ability to co-exist.<\/p>\n A plan for wilding pines<\/p>\n![\"Around](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/4JHH5PG_crowd_debate_jpg.jpeg\")
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