It’s a little known fact outside the growing community: peat is ubiquitous in producing the fruits and vegetables we eat. Organic and conventional systems alike rely on peat for plant propagation. This is a climate and biodiversity disaster, and alternatives have so far been thin on the ground. How is the horticulture industry dealing with the peat conundrum? Oliver Moore reports.
It’s a little known fact outside the growing community: peat is ubiquitous in producing the fruits and vegetables we eat. Peat is used for shallow rooting plants like lettuce and other greens especially. For mushrooms, it’s the main substrate used.
As well as devastating for climate and biodiversity, the very slow rate of regeneration of peat means that it is also in practical terms a finite resource – it’s running out.
So how do we produce more fresh fruit and veg but use less peat? What are the barriers and supports for growers who want to transition, from policy to practice? What’s working – and who’s working on helping with the transition?
What’s the issue?
Peatlands – bogs, moors, fens and other land-based wetland systems – make up less than 3% of all of the earth’s surface. This 3% contains up to 30% of all territorial carbon – more even than the world’s forests.
The problem is that this carbon sink can quickly become a source of carbon emissions. Damaged (degraded and/or over-exploited) peatlands (about 16% of the total of all peatlands) contributes up to 5% of global anthropogenic emissions.
In horticulture, much propagation relies on extracted, or mined, peat. It is a “perfect medium” for seedlings with finer rooting structures, such as lettuce, tomatoes and spring onions.
In some parts of Europe peaty soils are also grown on by horticulturalists. These include the drained Fenland peat bogs of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk in England. Similarly, as the Peatland Atlas 2023 shows, this happens in the Netherlands (Westland, North Holland, Friesland and Groningen) in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, in parts of Finland and Sweden for berry production, in regions in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and Poland too.
These growing practices can damage the soil through ploughing and subsequent air exposure, releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
One emerging alternative is paludiculture: a way of farming peatlands which does not drain them. Instead, wet conditions are maintained and managed while producing food, fodder, fuel or fibre from the land.
Legislation drives change?
In some countries, legislative change around peat has quickened up the search for workable alternatives.
Ireland has a particularly large proportion of peat – 21% of landmass, storing about 2.3 billion tonnes of Carbon.
Attempts to restrict peat extraction through legislation lit a fire underneath the horticulture industry.
“Within the commercial horticulture sector approximately 60% of the value of Irish horticulture is dependent on peat as a growth medium with the mushroom, amenity and soft fruit sectors most reliant on peat.”
2021 review of the use of peat moss in horticulture
Environmental groups such as the Irish Peatland Conservation Council noted that even the tentative target to end the sale of peat moss compost in the retail sector by 2025 was not going to be achieved.
Meanwhile, in Ireland as elsewhere research has been undertaken to progress the development of alternatives, especially for the mushroom sector.
Circular economy legislation and practice has seen more and more composts and wastes of varying types become options – woodfibre and wood waste, composted bark, composted greenwaste, composted brewery waste, anaerobic digestion (AD) & digestate, biosolids and more – each with their own practical, economic, environmental considerations (see table on page 15 of the review).
In the UK, grower-research initiatives as developed by Riverford Growers with Delfland Nurseries, the Coventry University and Cambridge Eco have emerged. Promisingly, some success has been found with lettuces on a reasonably large scale, involving blocks and machine planting.
Peat-free propagation is progressing, but for now, moves to enact environmental legislation are mired in a lack of motivation.
Q and A with Lu Fraser of RE-PEATRE-PEAT is a youth-led collective that has emerged from the peaty soil up. Can you give some examples of recent campaigns and other activities you run or are involved in?Peatland Justice, our most ambitious campaign to date, is currently in its second year. The priority of this campaign is to drive systemic change to phase out the use of peat in the horticultural and growing sector. Our focus is currently on pushing retailers to remove peat-containing products from their shelves and replace them with regenerative and responsible alternatives. This is a multi-stranded project which includes stakeholder interviews, a poster campaign, workshops, zine publications, a deep map exhibition, and research-led advocacy. We have a wide range of other ongoing projects, from educational programmes to installations, and cookbooks to comics. Some examples include Peat Fest, a peaty festival which has taken many forms, ranging from a 24-hour series of online events to a multi-country festival, with activities taking place in Norway, the UK, and the Netherlands. We are also in our fourth year of Bog Academy; a multi-sensory educational programme which deepens the connections between primary school students in Ireland and peatlands. RE-PEAT is also part of Restoration Academy, a programme which equips young people with the practical skills to undertake ecological restoration work through a series of active restoration camps. RE-PEAT has a wide approach to peatlands, focused on ‘changing hearts and minds’ and ‘telling a deeper story’. Why is this?One of the main challenges we find that peatlands have historically faced is a narrative problem. Despite their capabilities in holding huge amounts of soil carbon, their unique and vibrant biodiversity, their clean water provisioning and local flood and wildfire protection (we could go on…), peatlands have been commonly viewed through the lens of being unproductive spaces for more popular, profit-led land use purposes. This is why we engage so much in storytelling around peatlands, as a way of planting new seeds and cultivating new narratives that celebrate peatlands as wonderlands. Storytelling is also a valuable way to reach people who may not have been involved in the conversation before, and to draw new and meaningful connections. We want to engage the voices of any and all stakeholders with our work, and one way to do that is by prioritising accessibility and creating spaces where these voices are heard and amplified. The injustice around peatlands has colonial roots which continue to ripple to this day, and preventing the continuation of these injustices starts with including the perspectives and stories that have historically been left out. Where do you see progress being made? With retailers, with farmers, in different regions?Awareness of the issue has been growing over the years to a varying degree. In the UK, a peat ban is supposedly underway (though it was supposed to be completed by the end of 2024), but more importantly peat free alternatives are now widely available from almost all retailers in the country. Many brands across Europe are also following suit, and peat free alternatives are gaining more traction as options for growers and gardeners alike. Progress is also being made in environmental circles – peatlands are being brought into the conversation far more regularly in recent years, with their benefits as climate solutions and cultural gifts being valued more and more. With that said, there is still plenty of progress to be made. The status of peatlands and peat trade in Europe remains precarious What’s next for RE-PEAT?We will be continuing the Peatland Justice campaign until at least 2026, with intentions to carry it further. RE-PEAT continues to evolve, deepening and creating new roots and connections with every project. We’re always keen to hear from other groups and peat-lovers (new and old!) so we invite people to get in touch if they want to talk more or collaborate! |
How does EU policy treat peaty soils?
More environmentally considerate management of peaty soils is important because a whopping 20% of the EU’s agriculture emissions come from just 2% of the agricultural land – the portion that’s drained organic soil and/or peatlands.
A recent addition to the CAP is GAEC 2 – a Good Agri-Environmental Condition related to peaty soil.
This has however been delayed in many member states for each year since 2021, and is now under pressure from yet another simplification push. For Ireland and Poland – both with significant areas of peaty soil – experts and advocates fear that criteria for inclusion are being written to exclude the majority of relevant areas, to avoid any impact on production/yield.
Paludiculture is named as an acceptable practice in CAP, in the main to ensure farmers are not penalised for greater environmental ambition (Article 1, recital 16, 63; article 4 2(a) and article 4, 4 c (ii)). (See the CAP CAP Regulation SPR 2021_2115) However, of the over 490 eco-schemes (article on ecoschemes forthcoming) currently in operation in EU member states, there is none that expressly refers to paludiculture. One refers to the development of organic mulch for horticulture (Estonia), another refers to improving soil organic matter (Cyprus).
Outside of CAP the Nature Restoration Law has targets for restoring organic soils in agricultural use constituting drained peatlands:
- 30% by 2030, and rewetting at least a quarter of these peatlands;
- 40% by 2040, and rewetting at least a third of these peatlands;
- 50% by 2050, and rewetting at least a third of these peatlands.
This is important because “rewetting just 3% of EU agricultural land would reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25%” according to the European Court of Auditors.
Following much, as it were, watering down of the Law as it progressed through the institutions, there are caveats for “local circumstances”, and for significant negative impacts on infrastructure, buildings, climate adaptation or other public interests, and an emphasis on the voluntary nature of implementing these targets for farmers in the legal text.
Conclusion
Although consumers have varying degrees of knowledge or interest in the matter of peat use, many growers are concerned at horticulture’s dark little secret.
While some policy moves have emerged, many of these have been stymied or stalled with the green legislative rollbacks of recent years. GAEC 2 may not even kick in, and while there are a few European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) grappling with some peaty issues, around Europe, there are almost no eco-schemes to help horticulture move away from dark matter.
More
Shortsighted Vision: Unpacking EU’s new agrifood policy plans
From Protests & Polarisation to Weaving Common Ground – A Year of Rural Resilience
EU’s Competitiveness Compass – North-Pointing or are Things Heading South for Agri Policy?
Will the Nature Restoration Law Decision be Reversed? Not likely – here’s why
