Tim Groser

Wellington, Oct 7 NZPA - Trade Minister Tim Groser has been given a big plug in an influential United States newspaper for the global alliance on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, proposed last month by Prime Minister John Key .

"There are powerful commercial reasons why reducing emissions from the agricultural sector makes sense," Mr Groser told the Wall Street Journal.

While in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, Mr Key announced that the US was prepared to financially back a New Zealand initiative to ramp up research into agricultural emissions.

He also used a 15-minute meeting with United Nations head Ban Ki-Moon to push for a global alliance focusing on agricultural emissions.

The initiative would see a world-wide network set up for climate change research into agriculture and food production.

Mr Groser said food security would become an increasingly urgent problem over the next few decades, at the same time as people demanded action on climate change.

Global agriculture contributed about 14 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gases -- on a par with the emissions from every car, boat and plane on the planet -- but had so far been given little research funding.

New Zealand farmers campaigned against a call by the previous Labour government for them to increase their spending on emissions research, even though nearly half of the nation's total emissions come from agriculture.

Mr Groser said reducing agricultural emissions could not be at the expense of food production, because food production would need to double by 2050.

"Food security will always take priority over climate-change considerations."

At the same time, scientists have said global greenhouse gas emissions will need to be halved to limit global warming to 2degC -- the threshold at which climate change is expected to start taking a serious toll on life and property.

Mr Key's proposed global alliance could harness international research and give agriculture the political focus it deserved, Mr Groser said.

New Zealand was the only country in the world so far to have included agriculture in a proposed emissions trading scheme.

There had been expressions of interest from the US, India, Australia and the Netherlands, as well as private-sector companies and charitable foundations.

The proposed alliance would link researchers at the country level and be driven by the science community, "with some political oversight to give strategic guidance".

"Growing food without growing emissions can become a reality," said Mr Groser.