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Climate Change Minister James Shaw says farmers need to take part in a scheme to reduce emissions, after the release of a stark climate change report.
The report has found that 83 per cent of net growth in greenhouse gases since 2010 occurred in Asia and the Pacific - and that New Zealand, Australia and Japan, as a group, have some of the highest rates of emissions per capita.
Shaw said he did not think NZ has done enough as a country to reduce emissions.
Speaking about the agriculture industry, which has been working with government on a pricing scheme for the sector since 2019 part of the He Waka Eke Noa process, he said there needs to be some kind of pricing mechanism.
Farmer lobby group Groundswell has declined to meet with the Prime Minister about the scheme alongside other industry groups and is pushing to fund more research rather than pricing emissions.
Shaw said that isn't good enough.
"We've spent about $200 million on research and development over the course of the last dozen years or so and our emissions in agriculture have not come down.
"We've gotten more efficient, but we haven't yet reduced our emissions. So, we have to have a scheme in place that caps the emissions, and then brings them down every year, just like we've got for the rest of the economy."
Groundswell has in the past organised protests against regulation of the farming industry, but Shaw rejects any suggestion the government is not working with farmers.
He said the current process involved groups like Beef and Lamb NZ, Dairy NZ and Federated Farmers.
"The whole sector is involved in this, and so I think the charge that groundswell are laying, which is that we're not listening to farmers, is total bollocks."