Being Green

New Zealand has released a draft plan to tax farmers for the methane emissions from their sheep and cattle. The country is home to about 5 million people, and some 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep, and agriculture accounts for about half of its greenhouse gas emissions, mostly in the form of methane. There’s been a lot of criticism of the government’s failure to tackle the issue of emissions from the agricultural sector. Globally, agriculture is responsible for around one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Christo Van Der Rheede, the executive director of Agri SA which represents the agricultural industry in South Africa, about whether this kind of system would work here.