Te Pūtake 2026/27 season

We'll need to confirm the area, age and type of vegetation on your farm, and will need your permission to include any claimable carbon in your emissions footprint for 2026/27.

A tool will be available for you to check your vegetation is correct, and for you to give us permission to include it in your footprint if not used elsewhere already.

You can still pass this achievement – you only need to confirm what you do have, and whether it's assigned elsewhere.

You can do this at a vegetation plot level, so you can choose to exclude specific areas of vegetation accounted for elsewhere, while including any remaining vegetation in your Fonterra carbon removals assessment.

We can include any claimable vegetation on any land that you have mapped with Fonterra (both your dairy platform and any attached support land). We'll share more information on non-attached land soon.

No, the carbon benefit from removals will not be passed on to customers via credits. Your removals will be used to lower the footprint of your milk.

• Your farming activity – managing cows, using fertiliser and importing feed – creates emissions, but the vegetation on your farm can store some of the emissions generated.
• Vegetation like trees and shrubs remove carbon dioxide from of the air as they grow and these stored emissions are termed “carbon removals”.
• Through measuring your carbon removals, you can help to grow the value of your milk. Producing low-emissions milk strengthens Fonterra's competitive position and appeal to customers.

New Zealand’s soils generally have high levels of carbon thanks to our rotational grazing system and relatively low percentage of land cultivated/cropped. Natural events like droughts, floods, as well as cultivation and cropping can cause soil carbon to be lost, and there’s still uncertainty about how to fairly account for these changes.

Ongoing research aims to find the best management practices to improve soil carbon and ensure accurate measurement during different conditions.

We’ve simplified the first level of COD (Te Pūtake), reducing the number of requirements and focusing on the ones that create the most value.

This reflects the progress farmers have already made, allowing some activities to move from COD into baseline expectations under Terms of Supply. 

Some achievements (e.g. Workplace 360, digital submissions, plan verification) have been removed because they duplicated existing requirements or created unnecessary admin. 

Mandatory: Core requirements under Terms of Supply (e.g. food safety, animal wellbeing, environmental standards)
Co-operative Difference: Rewards additional actions that create value

This change makes that distinction clearer. 

Yes — where these requirements are part of QCONZ or other regulatory processes, they still apply.