Nineteen years after the ‘fart tax’, New Zealand’s farmers are fighting emissions

After years of tension with policy-makers, will New Zealand manage to deliver its world-first' scheme to reduce methane and nitrous oxide in agriculture?

Almost 20 years ago, hundreds of furious New Zealand farmers jumped into their tractors, farm bikes and trucks and ploughed up Wellington's main street towards parliament to kick up a stink against the so-called fart tax" - a levy on livestock methane gases, proposed by the then-Labour government to reduce emissions.

A cow named Energy was led up the building's granite steps and left an unwelcome mess in her wake. In doing so, she provided the opposition movement with a powerful, if indelicate, visual metaphor: rural New Zealand was ready for a mudslinging match with the capital. Just months later, the government abandoned the tax.