Agriculture
Everyone deserves fresh, healthy food grown in a way that’s good for our climate, rivers, wildlife and communities.
Over the past thirty years, farming in New Zealand has changed. Family farms are steadily being replaced by corporate, monoculture farms, with dairy cows crammed into every corner.
Intensive dairying is making our climate, our water and our communities sick. Industrial agriculture is New Zealand’s biggest climate polluter, largely thanks to all those dairy cows. Our rivers and lakes are in the worst state they’ve ever been. Even our drinking water is at risk.
Take action today
We want you to take action because together we’re strong.
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PETITION: Stop Fonterra using Palm Kernel
Call on Fonterra to end the use of rainforest destroying palm kernel on its farms by banning palm kernel in the Farmers’ Terms of Supply.
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Tell Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to stop the rollback of freshwater protection
Every New Zealander should be able to swim in clean rivers and know that the water coming out of their kitchen tap is safe to drink.
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Open Letter to Stop the Fast Track
Sign on to this open letter to industry now to help push more of them to opt out of the Fast Track.
Why it matters
We’re already seeing the shocking effects of the climate crisis. Places like Australia and California have faced raging wildfires. Storms and other destructive weather events are set to become more frequent and intense.
Even if we stopped using all fossil fuels tomorrow, we’d still be on the path to global heating because of the way we’re farming.
Synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and intensive dairying is also causing alarmingly high levels of nitrate contamination in our drinking water – endangering people’s health. Pregnant people who drink high nitrate water risk preterm and underweight babies, and scientists warn that nitrate in drinking water could be causing 100 cases of bowel cancer and 40 deaths per year in New Zealand. Rural communities on bore water are the most at risk. What is more – it can take up to 20 years to feel the full impacts of nitrate pollution on our waterways and on human health, meaning it is even more important to stop nitrate contamination at source. This is about people’s lives.
Farming can be part of the climate solution, but we need to make some changes.
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MPI lets illegal pesticide-laced food hit the shelves in NZ
An investigation by Greenpeace Aotearoa has revealed that for at least five years, New Zealand Food Safety has failed to recall food products or prosecute suppliers when food has tested…
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Damning new groundwater figures reveal growing drinking water crisis
Damning new groundwater data reveals that New Zealand is experiencing a drinking water crisis, with many monitoring sites contaminated.
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This is how you’ve made a difference with Greenpeace so far in 2025
In this issue of our magazine Kākāriki, you can read how you are how you are protecting our oceans, climate, forests, and communities here in Aotearoa and around the globe.
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BRIEFING Methane and GWP*: how the livestock lobby’s creative accounting undermines equity and threatens to derail climate action
Agribusiness lobby groups are running a coordinated global campaign to cripple efforts to reduce methane emissions
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Is New Zealand dairy farming the most efficient in the world?
New Zealand politicians, including the Prime Minister, regularly claim that our country’s dairy industry is “the most efficient” in the world. This is a common refrain, particularly when anyone –…
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Messages to Fonterra
We asked people from across Aotearoa to send messages that they wanted to share with Fonterra. And we received an overwhelming number of messages from people who are deeply concerned about Fonterra’s environmental destruction.
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Did Jacinda Ardern take politics out of climate with the Zero Carbon Act as she claims?
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave an interview to the Guardian newspaper recently about her new book in which she says she succeeded in “removing the politics from…
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Dairy industry greenwashing under fire as lawsuits go global
The world’s biggest dairy companies are facing a growing wave of legal action over misleading claims.
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Greenpeace lights up Fonterra HQ with NZers’ passionate calls for environmental action
This morning, Fonterra’s Auckland HQ was lit up with messages from New Zealanders calling on the dairy giant to take action on environmental pollution.