Beef and Lamb New Zealand is warning that Labour’s plans to introduce a livestock emissions tax early, should it get into power this year, will ruin the industry’s international competitiveness.

Beef and Lamb chairman Mike Petersen says Labour’s plans to bring agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme in 2013 to fund a R&D tax break for companies, will destroy the beef and lamb sector.

"So the question is, yes you could put a tax on farmers for something that they have no control over, and the end result of that is most likely the closing down of the beef and sheep sector.

"Eighty percent of NZ’s pastoral land, an $8 billion dollar industry you might as well just close the gates and walk off what’s going to happen to New Zealand then when we see an iconic industry just dry up and shrivel and rural communities go along with it."

Mr Petersen says Beef and Lamb has crunched the figures and estimates the cost to each farmer will be horrendous.

"We’re talking here effectively a cost per farmer of about $40,000 per farm for something that we have no tools yet to mitigate.

"So this will be just an outright tax on farmers with no ability to offset that cost anywhere else through their business."

Mr Petersen says the sheep and beef sector is not only already funding climate change research through its Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Consortium.

But also that it has generated $800 million in tax credits for the government due to its methane levels being lower than when the Kyoto Protocol was signed.

However, agriculture was already scheduled to be brought into the ETS scheme in 2015, albeit it would be eased into paying its share.

Labour economic development spokesman David Parker told Country 99 TV that Labour sees no rational reason to keep delaying agriculture’s introduction.

Parker says Labour is only asking for agriculture to pay for its 10 percent increase in emissions since 1990 – a bill currently being paid by all New Zealanders. 

"Are we attacking farmers? No we’re not. We’re actually saying that everyone should pay their fair share. At the moment the agricultural sector is exempt for their agricultural emissions – they pay for their transport and power emissions just like the rest of us.

"But we pay for their increases, and the rest of the economy pay for their increases in their agricultural emissions and that distorts the economy. 

"It’s boom time down on the dairy farm at the moment and we need the money as a government to fund the Research and Development tax credit so we all in New Zealand get wealthier."