The National Party appears to have been stumped by the Government's climate change policy to delay a price on agricultural emissions until 2025.

The Government has largely acquiesced to demands from the agricultural lobby, blunting the potential for National to run a "war-on-farmers" type campaign strategy favoured by the party on climate change.

National said there were parts of the policy to be worried about but it would "wait and see" whether it would actually change anything or vote against it.

The Government has given in to demands from the farming sector that agriculture stay out of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for the time being, giving it until 2025 to co-design some other kind of farm-by-farm emissions pricing scheme.

But there are teeth to the announcement in the form of a "backstop". Agriculture will enter the ETS at a farm-by-farm level by default in 2025 if no scheme is reached, and could do so as early as 2022 if the Climate Change Commission deems the sector isn't doing enough.

The Government is actually giving Cabinet the power to force agriculture into the ETS by administrative fiat in 2022 if the Commission says it should, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave media an assurance this power would be used if recommended.

National's climate change spokesman Scott Simpson said the announcement was a backdown for the Government's greener supporters, but the "backstop" was a scary prospect for farmers.

"The sword of Damocles is still hanging above farmers' heads in terms of the backstop and I think farmers will be worried about that, and rightly so," Simpson said.

"We are broadly in support of the opportunity for farmers to make change. You can't punish farmers until that technology [to lower emissions] exists. Hopefully by 2025 that stuff will be there."

Simpson said National would listen to how the wider sector viewed the proposal before coming to a more firm view.

"We'll take a breath, we'll wait and see how this stuff lands, and then we will scrutinise the legislation that the Government puts forward and come to a view."

New Zealand should also "wait and see" if pricing emissions made sense in 2025, he said.

National leader Simon Bridges has indicated a willingness to work with the Government on climate change, and voted for the first reading of the Zero Carbon Bill. Yet there are clearly a wide range of views within the caucus, and National has fiercely opposed most other Government policies on climate change.

The agricultural sector groups who signed on to the proposal today said they were keen for certainty across the political divide. The last National government exempted agriculture from the Emissions Trading Scheme when it was due to enter in 2015.

"We can't keep jumping from one end to the other on this stuff. This is beyond politics now. This is really the consumer talking," one industry source close to the negotiations said.

Labour campaigned at the last election on bringing agriculture into the ETS by the end of its first term.

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Ardern said today the cooperation with the sector - and thus the longer timeframe - was key to depoliticising the issue and avoiding more wild swings.

"My plan is we never again have to debate the path we are on. My plan is we never again see tractors drive up the front steps of Parliament. That we never again see people striking on the forecourt of Parliament asking why we aren't doing enough," Ardern said.

Climate Change Minister James Shaw told media this morning he had taken two models to Cabinet - one with no form of agriculture entering the ETS and one with it entering much earlier. The proposal that emerged was a mixture between the two, with the backstop that everybody hoped would not be used.

Greenpeace: Betrayal From The Government

Greenpeace campaigner Gen Toop said the plan was a betrayal of Labour and the Greens' campaign promises.

"The action plan is literally written by lobby groups and it contains no commitments over the next five years to reduce emissions from agriculture, which we need to start doing now - not in five years time," Toop said.

She said that given the ETS had been in place for close to a decade the agriculture sector should have been ready by now - and it would be a cheap entry anyway.

"The ETS has been in place for almost 10 years. The dairy sector emits more than our entire transport system. They had more than enough time to reduce their emissions - they are not going to do that unless the Government takes action."

"Dairy farmers were only going to have to pay one cent per kg of milk solids. I just find it unbelievable that the Government didn't have the bravery to make the dairy industry pay one lousy cent."

She said the only realistic solution in the timeframe required to stop more than 1.5C of warming was less cows.

"There will need to be much harder regulation in future to start reducing the number of cows. We are not going to meet our Paris targets or stay with 1.5C with this many ruminant livestock."

Peters: Common Sense Prevailed

NZ First leader Winston Peters was not present at the announcement but said his party had made sure that farmers were listened to.

"New Zealand First promised the farmers that we would not have a tin ear, that we knew how critical they were to our economy, that we also believed that they were interested in reform as we are," Peters said.

"This has been an enormously triumphant decision for common sense," Peters said.

Because of the coalition agreement between NZ First and Labour any emissions pricing of agriculture would come with a 95 per cent discount. On current prices that would be only $0.01c per kg of milk solid.