The Missing Ingredient in New Zealand’s climate policy: food

Abstract

The food system is a major producer of greenhouse gas emissions. There is a growing consensus that to achieve net zero we need to change production and consumption patterns. Mitigation policies that rely on improving production methods used to farm animals, rather than reducing the number of animals farmed, will likely, for multiple reasons, have only a limited overall impact. Policies that fail to address consumption miss opportunities for reducing emissions, as well as a range of other co-benefits. This article proposes that the representation of agriculture and its impact on climate needs to change. There is a compelling case for the food system to be included in climate policy as a coherent whole.