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Co-benefits and trade-offs of water quality mitigation measures on greenhouse gas emissions from New Zealand dairy systems

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posted on 2024-03-25, 00:41 authored by Chris SmithChris Smith, Tony van der WeerdenTony van der Weerden, Diana SelbieDiana Selbie

As part of government climate change policy, New Zealand dairy farmers will be encouraged to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through a proposed pricing mechanism. With integrated farm plans on the horizon, farmers need information on how mitigations for water quality will impact GHG emissions. Using a typology approach that captured the main production attributes and drivers of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) losses to water we assessed the impact of 12 current N and P contaminant mitigations on GHG co-benefits or trade-offs. Four of the mitigations had a co-benefit effect, with most of these being N mitigation measures.
Trade-offs were detected for two water quality mitigations (stand-off pads and deferring effluent application), resulting in an increase in estimated GHG emissions. The remaining six water quality mitigations tested, either had a minimal impact, or had both a tradeoff and co-benefit. Our data provides pastoral farmers and rural professionals with information to guide initial conversations on options to reduce losses to water and air for developing integrated farm plans

Funding

Our Land and Water National Science Challenge (Toitū te Whenua, Toiora te Wai), contract C10X1901 [Phase 2]

History

Rights statement

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Publication date

2023-11-10

Project number

  • PRJ0288041

Language

  • English

Does this contain Māori information or data?

  • No

Publisher

NZ Grassland Association

Journal title

Journal of New Zealand Grasslands

ISSN

2463-2880

Volume/issue number

85

Page numbers

285-302

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