Healthy food, healthy environment, and healthy communities
The Green Party will turn farming from one of our biggest environmental problems into one of its biggest solutions.
We can have a thriving, sustainable farming sector that tackles the climate crisis, prioritises mātauranga food production, helps rural communities flourish, cleans up our rivers, and makes sure we all have fresh and healthy food to eat.
But for decades, successive governments have treated farms like factories. Industrial agriculture is our biggest climate polluter, it is making our rivers and lakes sick, and family run businesses have been replaced by corporate farms.
Solutions to these challenges exist. We can take action to improve farm resilience against extreme weather events, and ensure farmers can make a decent living off the land, while keeping our environment healthy.
The Green Party has campaigned for decades to reduce the impacts of agriculture on nature and the climate. We have championed a new regulatory approach to help the organic sector grow. But other necessary changes, like a strong plan to cut climate pollution from farms, have been blocked or delayed.
Our plan will shift Aotearoa to regenerative farming. We will phase down intensive farming practices to improve the health of our climate, our awa, and rural communities.
The way we produce kai affects all of us. The time is now to create a thriving and sustainable farming sector that is good for farmers, good for communities, and good for the planet.
Our Plan
- Develop a National Food Strategy to ensure food production in Aotearoa is resilient to a changing climate, and work with Māori to ensure their food sovereignty aspirations are included.
- Support the development and leadership of indigenous agricultural practices through organisations such as Te Waka Kai Ora.
- Introduce a price on agricultural emissions, to ensure methane reduction targets are met, with reinvestment in onfarm emissions reduction.
- Increase support for farmers to transition to more sustainable forms of agricultural production through finance mechanisms such as low-interest loans and grants.
- Ensure contract terms with supermarkets are fair for food suppliers in the grocery sector.
- Phase out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use in Aotearoa to protect the health of our waterways and reduce emissions.
- Ban Palm Kernel Expeller and ensure all supplementary feed is sustainably sourced and does not enable intensive farming beyond the carrying capacity of the local environment.