Wellington, April 7 NZPA - New Zealand will support developing countries getting benefits from its Global Research Alliance on agricultural greenhouse gases for free, Prime Minister John Key said this morning.

The Government launched the alliance last year and the first meeting of member countries began in Wellington today.

Mr Key opened the meeting, welcoming representatives from the 29 countries who have signed up to the alliance which aims to step up international efforts to find ways to reduce the amount of emissions and environmental damage caused by agriculture. Russia joined the alliance overnight.

Mr Key highlighted the plight of developing countries in his speech and their high levels of climate emissions produced by agriculture. Unusually for a developed country, half of New Zealand's emissions are come from the sector.

Speaking to journalists, Mr Key said the issue of developing countries needing technology to tackle emissions would be discussed during the three days of talks.

"Will they have to pay for that technology or will countries just give it to them for free? We'd certainly support the idea that they will be given that technology for free simply because we know that developing countries don't have the capacity to pay and certainly have a growing emissions profile."

In his speech Mr Key said countries needed to harness collective efforts to make progress on the issue, given the world's population was growing and food production would need to rise by 50 percent by 2030. Fourteen percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions were from agriculture.

"We must find ways to handle the huge increase in food production that the world will need while reducing the emissions intensity of food production. That is the challenge before this group."

Mr Key said few viable mitigation options have been identified for agriculture and those that existed were sometimes technically difficult to implement and not always permanent.

He told reporters that with a concerted effort that could change.

"The global alliance is critically important. I think the world acknowledges that there's an issue when it comes to climate change. I think what we also know is that consumers don't want the reduction in their standard of living and their life style and therefore we need to find scientific and technological solutions," he said.

There were no guarantees of success but probability of finding solutions was much higher if "we all club together".

In New Zealand work already under way and there had been some success around nitrate inhibitors and efforts were in train on methane reduction.

"I think we are making progress but not at the pace that we need and certainly if we can get all of these countries together then we are in good shape... This is an idea with good momentum."

Over the three days of talks countries would nut out a structure for the alliance, talk about how to share technology and what financial and human resources could be put in.

The Government has budgeted $45 million over four years to the alliance, the United States has promised $NZ127m over five years, and Canada $NZ37m over four years.

"You can see the amount of resources will grow and I think will grow quite rapidly."

Separately, the Government is spending $50m on a domestic Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre, based in Palmerston North.

The alliance was expected initially to divide its work into four sectors: extensive livestock -- the kind of pastoral grazing common in New Zealand -- intensive livestock, arable farming and cropping, and rice paddy.

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