Consent applications have been lodged by three companies that want to set up 16 new farms in the central South Island’s Mackenzie Basin. According to the applications, up to 18,000 cows would be housed in “cubicle stables” 24 hours a day for eight months of the year, and 12 hours a day for the remaining four months.
Green co-leader Russel Norman says
Proposals to keep cows in cubicles that they don’t leave for eight months of the year are a radical departure from our tradition of farming stock outside and on pasture, and could do immense harm to our clean, green international brand. Once word gets out to overseas consumers that New Zealand butter comes from factory farms, there goes our competitive advantage.
Ironically, a few months ago the Greens proposed genetic engineering for pasturalism to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Now that really would knock our clean and green image.
Federated Farmers said “so-called factory farming” cut costs and was environmentally friendly. Cubicle farming would reduce the likelihood of effluent running into waterways, organisation president Don Nicholson said.
The debate over de-centralised vs concentrated agriculture has a parallel in energy. There is much discussion these days about “small-scale” hydro-electric generation being an environmentally softer approach than the large-scale projects of the last century. Small hydro power is defined as projects generating between 1MW and 50MW of electricity, usually without damming the river.
With the instream or run of the river Hydropower model the water diversion is very small and allows fish, water and material to bypass the hydro generator intake. The intake draws in a sufficient amount of water to generate power while passing the remaining flow down the original Instream path including major floods. Run of River design is a great ecological solution to the Hydroelectric energy needs we face and the environmental needs too.
claims one manufacturer of the small-scale hydro gear.
I’m not convinced though that 1000×1MW mini-hydro projects will have less collective environmental impact than one single 1000MW project. That feels a bit like saying that 30 motor cars will have less environmental impact than 1 bus, just because they are smaller, more dispersed, and individually have a lower environmental footprint. Or 1 million coal-burning home-fireplaces are better than the single Huntly power station. Huntly, just because it’s big and concentrated, can utilize electro-static precipitators and other flash gear in its chimneys to get much of the gunk out of discharges before it reaches the atmosphere.
It seems most Kiwis would agree. A ShapeNZ survey shows that in response to the question “Which electricity generation sources do you believe are best for New Zealand in the next 10 years”, large-scale hydro and small-scale hydro are a dead-heat equally rated by 35% of respondents. You can decentralise and disperse as much as you like – but at the end of the day there is just one Earth. You can run but you can’t hide from the fact that just being alive will have some negative environmental impact.
- Related posts on factory farming
- Greenfudge.org » ‘Eat less meat to stop climate change’ – British …
- Susie Middleton: The Meat-Eaters Guide to Eating Less Meat …
- animals in canada
- Related posts on Mackenzie Basin
- Climate Hacker Tempest or Teacup?
- Canadian panel finds Arctic infrastructure unprepared for climate …
- Earth Snapshot • Lakes in New Zealand’s Mackenzie Basin – November …
- Related posts on small-scale hydro
- Job Skills in a Carbon Constrained World « The Kenan-Flagler Blog
- Moving Back Toward a Simpler Way of Life
- Small scale hydro power generation allows school in Sri Lanka to …
Tags: 100% Pure New Zealand, clean & green, clean & green NZ, Clean and Green, clean and green NZ, factory farming, Kaitiakitanga, Mackenzie Basin, small-scale hydro