Addressing the company’s annual meeting in Timaru yesterday, Mr Taggart said no other country appeared to allow unlimited offsetting by planting trees on productive agricultural land: California limited it to 8% and Europe to 10%.
"Essentially our Government is saying it’s OK for carbon emitters to avoid addressing their carbon footprint by unlimited offsetting. Rural communities are bearing the brunt of this flawed policy as more and more farms convert to carbon farming."
The Government had "limited visibility" of the scale of the trend and the only factor slowing it down at the moment was the ability to source pine seedlings.
Declining livestock numbers remained a concern for Alliance Group. While it could accept decline due to market forces, decline "driven by Government incentives distorting land-use" was frustrating.
"In some ways this is nothing new, with successive governments over the decades meddling in our sector through farm subsidies, uneven environmental rules, employee wage negotiations, market intervention etc.
"This time around the impacts are significant both in the scale of land-use change and the lasting impact on rural communities, and ultimately New Zealand," he said.
While the Government initially ignored important aspects of the industry-supported He Waka Eke Noa proposal, there had been "a hint of some common sense" in recent weeks.
"Pleasingly there is acceptance of the split gas approach and agriculture staying out of the ETS, however there is a long way to go before we can confidently say we have sensible, practical regulation in the emissions space," he said.
Mr Taggart said the largest upheavals this year had been global. Global logistics remained challenging and, while drygoods shipping was returning to normal service levels, refrigerated container shipping was still some way off normal container availability and ship reliability.
The ability to reliably transport chilled product on ocean freight remained heavily compromised, particularly on longer routes, forcing customers to frozen product.
Against that background of global volatility and domestic challenges, the company’s record $116.3million operating profit was an "outstanding result", achieved on record turnover of $2.2billion.
Mr Taggart acknowledged outgoing chief executive David Surveyor, who joined the company in early 2015 following a career in steel and building products.
During the final interview stage for the position, Mr Surveyor presented his vision for Alliance Group, outlining four key pillars around safety, increased revenue and margin, world-class processing and securing livestock supply, before outlining what he thought success would look like. Looking across the five criteria for business success that he set himself eight years ago, it was clear he had "met every one", Mr Taggart said.
■Mr Taggart and Don Morrison, who retired by rotation and sought re-election, were both re-elected as directors.
