Tag: agriculture

Do android farmers dream of electric tractors?

Here’s a way to reduce agricultural emissions: the electric tractor. Global Public Media make the case for the electric tractor as a means to eliminate fossil fuel use (and helpfully explain why farms can’t be self-sufficient in biofuels):

This week we took a (petroleum-powered) scenic drive through the redwoods to the Mendocino coast to visit Stephen Heckeroth and demo his “Solar Electric Tractor.

More on inhibition

Brian Fallow provided a good overview of the politics and reality of dealing with agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in yesterday’s Herald:

In the context of a dairy boom the arguments for exempting agriculture is likely to fall on ears if not entirely deaf, at least hard of hearing. The dairy sector, after all, would not be asked to physically reduce its emissions to some level. It would only have to take financial responsibility for any increase in emissions above that level. If it is cheaper to buy emissions reductions that have occurred elsewhere or offsets from forest sinks, well, that is exactly what a trading regime is for. It is intended to achieve emissions reductions at least cost, and reflects the fact that the atmosphere does not care where the reduction occurs. More cows, in short, may just mean more trees. Or biogas digesters. Or biodiesel from algae on effluent ponds.

Exotic forest descriptions

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has released its annual National Exotic Forest Description report (HTML and PDFs), finding that New Zealand’s plantation forest area has declined for the second year in a row. From the MAF press release:

The 2006 survey indicates approximately 12,900 hectares of forest clear felled in the year to 31 March 2006 will not be replanted. This represents a third of the total area harvested. Most of this ‘deforestation’ occurred in the Central North Island and Canterbury, mostly converted to pasture.

NZ’s plantation forests cover about 1.8 million hectares in total, 70% in the North Island, and Pinus radiata, aka the Monterey pine, covers 89% of that land. Stuff, the Herald and No Right Turn point out the obvious – a loss of forest cover increases our Kyoto liability. Perhaps we should let all the wilding radiata grow, and count them as sinks instead… (that was irony, by the way).