Leading the field: New Zealand’s world-first cow burp tax – and the industry’s response

Rachel Pannett visits a South Waikato farm that’s embracing change to help mend the planet

Farmer Sharon Moss marks cows with blue paint representing their stage of processing (Washington Post/Cameron James McLaren)

George Moss walks through a landscape dotted with grassy knobs of volcanic rock, following a herd of cows meandering along a dirt trail to pasture after their second milking of the day.

His pedigree cows in Tokoroa rank among New Zealand’s most productive cattle, the result of careful breeding and quality grazing land. Millions of years of volcanic activity in the area have created rich soils ideal for this kind of free-range, grass-fed farming, helping turn dairy cows into the country’s biggest export earners.

But the digestive processes of the livestock – basically, their burps – emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and as a result, agriculture makes up half of the country’s emissions. Now, the island nation, dubbed the Saudi Arabia of milk for its dominant role in the global dairy trade, faces a reckoning over how to balance the outsize contribution that ranchers make to the economy against New Zealand’s need to meet its greenhouse gas pledges.