We need more of it!

Sphagnum farming workshop

 

The most important statement came even before the event began. “We need more of it,” said Bernd Hofer, one of the world’s recognized experts on peatlands, to a small group at the welcome coffee. And for the rest of the day, the focus was on the question of how we can cultivate, extract, utilize and market peat moss outdoors on a large scale.

Klasmann-Deilmann hosted the workshop “Successful peat moss farming – but how?” The event was prepared and held by Bernd Dreyer and Sjanie Hindenberg, our Sphagnum experts. The event was hosted by the German 3N Competence Center under the direction of Jan Köbbing as part of the “PALUDIFarming” funding project, in which we are also active. The strength of the meeting was that participants from all key areas of interest and expertise took part. Universities, institutes, politicians, district and other authorities, specialist agencies, start-ups, agriculture and substrate manufacturers were all represented.

Klasmann-Deilmann has been working intensively with peat mosses, their cultivation and use for ten years. Sphagnum farming is an essential part of paludiculture and as a form of land management that protects peat soils, it could one day become very important for nature and climate protection, agriculture and the substrate industry. In particular, peatlands from the agricultural sector are rewetted for cultivation in order to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The biomass growing on these areas has already been well researched as a renewable component for substrate production and is in great demand due to its high suitability for horticulture.

Nevertheless, development is only progressing slowly. The workshop once again took a close look at all the opportunities and obstacles along the value chain. The main hurdles are still:

• the costly and time-consuming approval procedures for which, for example, a number of expert opinions have to be commissioned
• the high costs of land preparation
• the optimization of the economic efficiency of existing cultivation systems
• the guarantee of sufficient harvest quantities and lucrative sales channels
• the immature harvesting technology and processing of the raw materials
• convincing farmers to adopt a completely new form of cultivation
• the high price per cubic meter

The workshop did not lead to any completely new solutions. However, it once again became very clear what a valuable raw material peat moss is and that persistent further work in this area is absolutely vital. The next important step for the four main players – agriculture, science, rural districts and the substrate industry – could be to jointly implement a bigger pilot project that demonstrates ways of implementing peat moss farming economically and scaling it up. The Emsland region would be particularly suitable as a possible project region.