O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Mr Chair thank you very much and I appreciate the opportunity to answer a number of the questions raised here. I have to firstly lay out and thank the primary sector for what has been an outstanding performance through some really tough times. We had over $50 billion a year in export earnings which has never before been achieved in this economy. I want to thank all those people from the top of the country to the bottom who in any way from the farm right through the production system through to the shipping have shifted this offshore and who have produced the wealth for our country. It's through meat fish dairy—the whole lot in fact—and the prices at the moment are very very good. It's in part because we produce high-quality goods but international conditions are squeezing things. We've heard about inflationary pressures and they were starting to occur prior to the Ukraine situation but they have been exacerbated by that and I just want to thank the people. At the same time while producing that they have been focused on better environmental management. There are 170 catchment groups supported by the Government out around the country focusing on better water quality better nutrient management and better biodiversity protection. This is a good-news story but there are fewer and fewer farmers on the land as we've become more efficient over a number of decades and so there is a larger number of people in New Zealand who don't understand some of the good work that's going on. None the less there does need to be improvement in some areas. Intensive winter grazing was one area where we saw some horrific images. We've put out some proposals and we've adjusted and amended those proposals to be now really pragmatic to ensure that farmers can look after their stock through the winter. We don't have measurements for pugging. We just want people to replant when they can and we do want them to plant on not such steep country so that we can reduce the sediment load. So there are areas of challenge and one of the questions raised of course was around methane and how we might reduce that. It is a big challenge internationally. There is a focus on livestock protein production and a view that it's contributing in a negative way and it is contributing in a negative way. Well that's up to us to prove that it's not negative. Yes there will be emissions but that will be with high concentrated protein through systems that do protect the environment as well. I'll work through if I can. As I say I could go on about all the good things that we've done. Progress on M. bovis is better as it was referred to by the chair and I'd like to acknowledge Jo Luxton. She's chaired a really good committee. The cooperation and the points raised in questions are I think indicative of that level of cooperation to support the key drivers of economic wealth creation in this country and that's great. Can I just go back—I'll work through things as I can—to the one on DairyNZ. They've put out a report based on mental health and there have been stresses. It's been stressful for pretty much everyone across our economy. There have been advantages in the primary sectors in that while there's been a shortage of labour and there's always pressures from adverse weather events generally people have been able to continue with their businesses and have often had better incomes than they had prior to COVID because of international prices. Look that's a plus. It doesn't mean to say there aren't pressures in the system and we do have to do better to ensure people have access to support. We've put more money into rural support trusts we've funded the responses to adverse events and we've had people on the ground. We've done all we can and I think generally it's been accepted that it's the right level of support from central government while depending upon people on the ground to deliver that help directly to individual farmers and to their families and that's the best way. We can't do it from Wellington but we can support the organisations like the Rural Support Trust to do that and so we acknowledge the stress. But again I'm reminding people who get into business on farms that there are many variables in a farming operation and they have become more acute with the weather events so you've got to build some resilience into the system. The bank may want to provide a bit more money but I'd suggest that people hesitate to add another $100000 or $200000 to your debt loading because you do need a bit of headroom for those times when there might be impacts on your income. So reducing the financial stress is also part of that. Can I come back to one of the points raised and I'll work through them. The contractors: there was an allowance for 200 contractors at the end of last year and indeed maybe only nine came through. That was in part because the contractors chose to delay bringing those people in and took the lower-cost option of bringing them in later in the season. Look I know it's been hard and people have worked long hours but we've managed to get through and I guess there are many other parts of our economy where people can say Actually we haven't managed to get through." So we're ahead of the game across the primary sector in many many areas. Look there are many other areas of the economy that have faced bigger challenges and haven't been able to find a way through as the primary sector has and in spite of the shortage of workers because our people haven't been able to come in and out of the country we have picked most of the fruit we have processed most of the meat and we've got the milk to market and that's as I say a credit to the people—not just farmers but people driving the tankers and people picking the fruit—who have done that little bit of extra effort. Our summer fruit for example down in the member's area—you know we've had some crises. We heard it was really tough two years ago. This year they managed to make do. I'm not saying it was easy for them but they got through and I want to thank them for their efforts. So hopefully now with the borders open some of that labour pressure will be relieved. If I can move on to a couple of the other questions and points raised by people the nitrate inhibitors and the challenge around through He Waka Eke Noa—this is the industry - Government - Māori collective looking at the challenges and progress that we can make—we have a target of 10 percent reduction of methane in agricultural emissions by 2030. I think we can get there and while we have limited access to technology at this stage there is quite a lot in the pipeline. We're working internationally across about 60 countries to come up and share the technology—things like bolus things like nitrate inhibitors. But as we saw with dicyandiamide we've got to be cautious about how we use these things so that we don't end up with traces in our products offshore. So that caution is justified; none the less the challenge of actually reducing our emissions from agriculture remains in place. We'll work with the industry we'll listen to their advice and I'm sure we'll put in place a workable solution to that. If I can just go on to where I guess the Greens have followed on and raised some points around adaptation. Many of the most productive areas in this country like the Hauraki Plains are actually in low-lying areas. They are the most productive areas because in fact the nutrients have flowed off the hills down into the valleys and created these nice flat fertile plains and it will be a challenge. There have been some across the primary sectors for years who have denied the impacts of climate change. I think that's pretty much disappeared as we have seen more frequent events and more severe events affecting people on the land. So we are going to have to work together to try to adapt to the new world that we live in—again building resilience into our farming systems building it into our business models—so that when an event occurs it doesn't tip someone over or create huge stress and so that you are ready for this. Maybe there will be withdrawal required from some particular areas. I can't make that judgment but I do know that actually people in the primary sectors like most Kiwis are pretty innovative and pretty adaptive and I think we'll get through this. But we can't deny the fact that the world is changing and the environment within which we work is changing as well. Organics—yes we need to get that bill through the House to give some consistency and there's division within the organics sector as to what we should do. I'm committed to get that through offer certainty and I think we'll grow as the EU has committed to have 25 percent of their production in organics; I think it's by 2030. But none the less people are more conscious of what they eat and we will be producing higher-value products. Organics will be part of the mix. It won't be all of it but I welcome progress in that area. The ACT Party raised a question around the spending on methane mitigation. Again there's been quite a lot of money being spent on R & D here. We have through Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures in fact spent money on new initiatives. The important thing is that we've changed this to make sure that we have open access to that information and it's not captured and retained by an individual company. Usually it's a fifty-fifty or it's a joint venture so a company involved in some of this new innovation wants to have some returns—fair point. But actually if we discover something that is good for us and good for the world then we have a moral obligation to utilise that technology and that knowledge to help reduce emissions across the globe particularly when it comes to biogenic methane. It's not simple. We can't turn off the cow's system but there is a growing number of technologies that we will develop. So working with He Waka Eke Noa and how they want to incentivise uptake of that technology on-farm is really important. They're working through some challenging areas there as to how we get the funding to put into the technology and then how we distribute that among the farming sector to get uptake as quickly as possible to meet—[Time expired]"