Danish Dairy Farmers Forced to Pay World’s First Carbon Tax on Livestock
Danish farmers’ group Bæredygtigt Landbrug said the measures amounted to a “scary experiment.”
Dairy farmers in Denmark have to pay the world’s first carbon tax on their livestock, all in the name of a climate crisis that does not exist.
The country’s coalition government agreed this week to introduce the world’s first carbon emissions tax on agriculture. It will mean new levies on livestock starting in 2030.
Denmark is a major dairy and pork exporter, and agriculture is the country’s biggest source of emissions. The coalition agreement — which also entails investing 40 billion krone ($3.7 billion) in measures such as reforestation and establishing wetlands — is aimed at helping the country meet its climate goals.
“With today’s agreement, we are investing billions in the biggest transformation of the Danish landscape in recent times,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement Tuesday. “At the same time, we will be the first country in the world with a (carbon) tax on agriculture.”
The key details of Denmark’s plan include:
- Implementation date: 2030
- Initial tax rate: 300 kroner ($43) per ton of CO2 equivalent
- Tax rate by 2035: 750 kroner ($108) per ton of CO2 equivalent
- Effective tax after 60% tax break: 120 kroner ($17) per ton in 2030, rising to 300 kroner ($43) by 2035
- Estimated cost per cow: 672 kroner ($96) annually, based on average emissions of 5.6 tons of CO2 equivalent per cow.
Interestingly, New Zealand was heading in this direction as well. But due to a new government that wasn’t completely beholden to climate cultism, it reversed course.
In June this year, the country’s relatively new centre-right government scrapped plans for the so-called “burp tax” – a reference to the methane produced by livestock. This fulfilled a “pre-election pledge by [New Zealand prime minister] Christopher Luxon’s National Party”, Al Jazeera said at the time.
The government said it would instead invest hundreds of millions of dollars on emissions-reduction technology and boost funding for an agricultural greenhouse gas research centre.
Agriculture minister Todd McClay said that the government is “committed to meeting our climate change obligations without shutting down Kiwi farms”.
This is no small move by Denmark. The country is a significant exporter of dairy products, with a robust dairy industry contributing substantially to its economy. Denmark’s dairy product exports, including eggs and honey, were valued at about $3.9 billion in 2023.
Consequently, an array of unintended consequences are likely to occur that the Danish eco-bureaucrats have not considered.
Farmers will likely pass on the cost of this tax to consumers, increasing general unhappiness with the climate cultists who instituted the tax in the first place.
Some farmers will likely trim their herds, which could lead to job losses in rural areas and increase the costs of dairy products.
Finally, there could be protests and demonstrations along the lines of those we have seen being directed at the European Union earlier this year when it was proposing a slew of new rules directed at agriculture. In fact, this outcome is likely, given how unhappy farmers are at the move.
…Danish farmers’ group Bæredygtigt Landbrug said the measures amounted to a “scary experiment.”
“We believe that the agreement is pure bureaucracy,” chairman Peter Kiær said in a statement. “We recognize that there is a climate problem… But we do not believe that this agreement will solve the problems, because it will put a spoke in the wheel of agriculture’s green investments.”
All of this is so unnecessary. Cattle are integral to the biogenic carbon cycle, which involves the recycling of carbon between plants, animals, and the environment.
Perennial forages and grasslands, which form the foundation of the beef cow-calf sector, are critical carbon sinks. They can store up to 30% of the world’s organic carbon. Cattle have a unique ability to convert cellulose-rich plants that humans cannot digest into high-quality protein. This process allows them to utilize marginal lands that are unsuitable for crop cultivation, effectively upcycling human-inedible forages and byproducts.
In turn, people and cows also release carbon world, such as carbon dioxide and methane. Carbon dioxide is an essential gas that plants need to survive.
C02 is Not causing a Climate Crisis
C02 is Plant food🌱 – It’s literally pumped it into Greenhouses, increasing yields by 30%
Earth C02 is currently at ~420 ppm
C02 was at 6,000! ppm (+1,328%) at the time of the Dinosaurs 🦕🌴
Carbon Dioxide = Life 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/TUybaTzC74
— Jimmy Corsetti (@BrightInsight6) February 4, 2024
Arguably, the “experts” and their ill-guided policies will likely adversely impact another finely-tuned cycle of nature.
The biogenic carbon cycle: Literally the circle of life. pic.twitter.com/6TYxX6Bu6Z
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) October 22, 2024
In conclusion, I think it is time we all give cows the credit they richly deserve.
TRUMP: “I love cows. They’re so cute and so beautiful but with Kamala who’s a radical left lunatic you will not have any cows.” pic.twitter.com/StPhezrU6s
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 18, 2024
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Comments
I’ll bet Russia will think twice about invading. The carbon tax on all the diesel engines would be outrageous!
This will go about as well as the Norway tax on the rich, it meant to raise $164 million and lost over $550 million.
God save us all from these lunatics
This seems to be the right time for a “Let them eat cake” comment. What possible down side could there be to crippling your food supply? They might find out that hungry peasants are revolting.
Ahh, they have plenty of pastries to eat, and goat’s milk for their cheese.
The Danes are intentionally hurting their farmers.
Yes, let us add an additional cost that our farmers’ competitors do not have.
I went to the actual article and saw the Danish tax minister comments about the “actual cost.”
He claims that the initial cost is not $43/ton, because after a tax deduction, the after-tax deduction, the cost is $17.30.
However, if the farmer is operating at a loss, he will not get a tax deduction.
Denmark is committing financial suicide.
Rational people are waking up to the fact that the entire collection of “green” and “climate change” agendas, schemes and diktats are nothing more than the largest wealth transfer grift/con/hustle of all time, facilitated and enabled by vile leftists and Dhimmi-crats, and, benefiting their cronies, donors and courtiers.
For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorizes and demoralizes us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind; almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda.
Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
I am going to miss Havarti cheese after the Danish dairy industry collapses.
Subotai Bahadur
Sounds like milk just got a lot more expensive for the Danes
Dairy farming is already a low-profit industry. Its also 24/7/365. You can only lose so much money while working yourself and your family into the ground before you make other choices.
Much smarter to sell off your cows an turn your farm into a apartment housing development, covering what was once green fields producing copious oxygen into a sterile asphalt desert
All for the sake of reducing, perhaps, a trace gas that is vital to all life on earth.
Herd the cows down to the nearest Midas, and install catalytic converters. Problem solved!
Not going to lower temps by 1 degree. What are they going to do with the tax revenue?
Waste it.
we do the same probably hidden under some unassuming regulation
socialism is no joke
The madness here is that, unlike many industries that can switch to alternate fuels/sources of energy or improve the efficiency of the “scrubbing” of their emissions, the only way a diary farmer can reduce his carbon footprint is to (as the article mentions) reduce his herd. He can’t feed the cows special feed, he cannot alter their gut biome, he cannot re-engineer the cow. So why does the tax go up over time? The usual purpose of that is to force change. Make more change now, avoid more taxes in the future. This model does not work for dairy farmers.
Completely intentional, of course. The goal is to destroy the dairy industry in the name of climate change. If they can’t eliminate dairy consumption (their real goal) then at least make it so expensive that it’s significantly reduced. It won’t affect the wealthy, of course. They don’t care if the price of a bottle of milk doubles.
Farmers need to bring out their high powered manure spreaders to their government overlords places of business and their homes.
Then they can protest their green overlords need to not only pay carbon taxes on what the farmers spew at their homes and offices, but that those elites should be fined for not cleaning it up fast enough.
Then they should start building stockades as a hint.
Notice that all these grand plans seem to not start until the feckless politicians pushing them are long out of office.
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