We consider two approaches to quantify New Zealand farmers’ ability to mitigate their farm’s environmental impact: The construction of marginal abatement cost curves and improvements in farm management practices. Marginal abatement cost curves can be constructed by combining information on...

The intensity of agricultural production affects both nutrient and greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental policy designed to reduce one type of pollution may have complementary effects on the other type. This paper explores this issue in the Lake Rotorua catchment in New Zealand using an...

This paper describes preliminary work on establishing a pilot project for carbon sequestration. The project is intended to simulate the structure of the Permanent Forest Sinks Initiative, a program that may extend to the national level under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture and...

Hendy and Kerr (2005b) find that an emissions charge on agricultural methane and nitrous oxide of $25 per tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent would be likely to reduce New Zealand‘s net land-use related emissions for commitment period one in the order of 3%, with full accounting. The...

Emissions trading and nutrient trading interact in critical ways. The agricultural sector is a major emitter of both nutrients and greenhouse gases in New Zealand. Thus the simultaneous implementation of such systems will have a large impact on the farmers in affected catchments. Many of the...

A risk efficient frontier for a pastoral farm indicates the optimal enterprise mix that allows the farmer to generate the highest income for a given level of financial risk. It is calculated by matching the available range of enterprises (sheep, beef cattle, deer, dairy, exotic forest and...

The key resource in efficient production is the management input used to coordinate the land, labour and capital. Yet, our understanding of this resource is still somewhat limited, especially the factors involved in improving the managerial ability of farmers. This paper summarises three tests...

The National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management now requires that water quality objectives and limits be set for all water bodies in New Zealand. Where objectives result in the development of nitrate limits for waterways and development pressure is likely to make these limits difficult to...

Nutrient emissions from agricultural land are now widely recognized as one of the key contributors to poor water quality in local lakes, rivers and streams. Nutrient trading has been suggested as a regulatory tool to improve and protect water quality. However, farmers’ attitudes suggest that...