THE New Zealand government has launched draft proposals to tax farmers on their cattle and sheep burps in a bid to tackle rising greenhouse gas levels.

If adopted, NZ will be the first country in the world to enter into a scheme that will tax farmers on the amount of methane produced by their livestock. Released to the atmosphere, methane is a greenhouse gas that traps heat from the sun more than 20 times as efficiently as carbon dioxide.

Professor John Wallace from the University of Aberdeen, UK, outlined the context of how important controlling these gas levels are: “People think of carbon dioxide as the main greenhouse gas, but methane is pretty important too.

“From all the greenhouse gas emissions produced by man, 16% of this is methane, while around a third of that comes from ruminant livestock.”

There are five million people in New Zealand along with ten million cattle and 26 million sheep. In the past, agricultural emissions have been exempted from the country’s emissions trading scheme, but this has come under intense scrutiny more recently.

The new proposals plan to charge farmers for their gas emissions from 2025. Farmers will receive incentives in the scheme if they can demonstrate their emissions are falling by using feed additives and they can use on-farm forestry areas to offset emissions.

Dairy farmer Andrew Hoggard, who is also the national president of Federated Farmers of New Zealand, said he broadly approved of the proposals: "We've been working with the government and other organisations on this for years to get an approach that won't shut down farming in New Zealand, so we've signed off on a lot of stuff we're happy with.

"But you know, like all of these types of agreements with many parties involved, there's always going to be a couple of dead rats you have to swallow.

"There are still the nuts and bolts to be hammered out, like who actually implements the scheme, so there's still stuff to work through with the government,” he added.

Last month, New Zealand's finance minister dedicated NZ$2.9bn for initiatives to tackle climate change, which were to be funded by an emissions trading system that taxed polluters.

The money raised from this livestock burp tax scheme will be invested in research, development and advisory services for farmers, the country's environment ministry said.

Climate Change Minister James Shaw said: “There is no question that we need to cut the amount of methane we are putting into the atmosphere, and an effective emissions pricing system for agriculture will play a key part in how we achieve that.”