In this report the Commissioner examines the issue of agricultural greenhouse gases – methane and nitrous oxide – which together form about half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. This high proportion of emissions coming from agriculture is a major challenge for New Zealand. The science is complex and the policy debate is polarised.

This paper uses farm-level data to examine resource reallocation in the Australian dairy industry between 1979 and 2013, and assesses the contribution of this process to industry-level productivity growth before and after deregulation reforms were introduced in 2000. We show that deregulation facilitated the reallocation of resources from less efficient farms to more efficient ones...

The Australian government’s intervention in the dairy crisis, by offering concessional loans to struggling farmers, has prompted suggestions that other types of regulation – such as a dairy floor price - might be needed. The dairy industry was deregulated more than a decade ago; perhaps it’s time Australia looked to other countries for models to...

On 2 June 2015, the NZ Primary Industries Minister requested a report from the Commission, and provided a Terms of Reference for the report. The final report, published on 1 March 2016, provides the minister with an independent view on the state of competition in the New Zealand dairy industry. Having considered submissions on the...

Abstract Dairy farming is New Zealand's pre-eminent primary industry. It achieves large export earnings but is also responsible for a large proportion of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. One of those greenhouse gases is CO₂, and in order to lower New Zealand's net greenhouse gas emissions, it is important to identify any management options that...