Source: Federated Farmers
Federated Farmers is calling for new proposed ‘green’ finance rules to be scrapped, warning they’re ideologically driven, unworkable, and risk doing real harm to rural communities.
In a letter sent to Ministers and key officials on July 11, the organisation outlined a series of serious concerns with the Sustainable Finance Taxonomy.
“This framework is fundamentally flawed,” Federated Farmers banking spokesperson Mark Hooper says.
“It has been created without meaningful input from working farmers, it imposes unrealistic standards, and it risks cutting off financial services to legitimate, productive rural businesses.”
The Sustainable Finance Taxonomy is being developed by the Centre for Sustainable Finance and the Ministry for the Environment to provide a consistent framework for defining what is ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ in financial markets.
Federated Farmers says it would create major risks for New Zealand’s agricultural sector and is urging the Government to halt the process entirely.
“One of our core concerns is the lack of practical farming expertise involved in developing the taxonomy,” Hooper says.
“There are no hands-on farmers involved with the Technical Advisory Group. Instead, it’s full of shiny-shoed bankers, sustainability advisors, and forestry lobbyists.
“If you’re designing a finance framework for agriculture, farmers must be at the table. This is a total governance failure.”
Without real-world knowledge of farming systems, the framework fails to reflect the operational realities and sustainability efforts already embedded in New Zealand’s primary sector.
For example, the proposed taxonomy defines ‘green’ farming as producing less than one tonne of CO₂ equivalent per hectare per year.
“This threshold is so low that no working New Zealand farm could realistically qualify, even though we’re home to the most emissions-efficient food producers in the world,” Hooper says.
