Farmers are welcoming the government's decision to abandon its plan to levy farmers for emissions research.
Government ministers said they had agreed to a research programme sufficient to remove the need for a statutory levy on individual sheep, cattle and deer.
Federated Farmers of New Zealand vice-president Charlie Pedersen says the farming community has fought hard in recent months - staging FART-tax rallies and assembling a petition with 65,000 signatures - to show government that the emissions charge was a ridiculous burden.
"Farmers will be relieved that the government looks to have finally got the FART tax out of its system," Pedersen says.
He says farmers pay $77 million a year in voluntary levies, much of which funds a wide range of research benefiting not only farmers but all New Zealanders. Research delivers productivity gains, which in turn benefit the environment.
"Farmers said they would not pay the tax and only support research that made sense. As such abandoning the FART tax is a fantastic victory for farmers."
However, Pedersen warns that although farmers have won a battle against ridiculous taxes, it had not won the regulatory war over greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon tax and other "way-out" ideas still loom as threats to the farming community, he says.
