Paludiculture (Wetland farming)

Introduction

There are two schools of thought. First one is to restore and conserve peatlands with all that entails. The second one has to do with economics and pragmatism.

For years and to an extent even now, many belong to the first camp where the over-riding consideration was to restore and conserve peatlands at any and all cost. It started with global warming and ozone layer depletion. Then it moved onto amazon rainforest and cutting fossil fuel extraction and use and recently the climate change, with many advocating for the banning of all vehicles except electric ones being one such example. No new power stations, no new oil exploration and moving from manufacturing and farming to service-based industry in a bid to move society through what is commonly referred to as the grand structural economic transformation. Hence at present; we in the western democracies are deemed to be at a transitioning stage. So many arguments, so many opposing statistics, data after data all reaching to contradictory conclusions and action plans costing billions. One stark fact in amongst all the drama is the singular lack of input from the population at large, the so-called electorate and any scientific data that casts doubt on this grand plan is quickly discredited and discarded. The driver of this economic transformation appears more like social engineering based on conflicting ideologies. For example, it took a weird turn recently where even cow farts became a source of national debate. Since billions of us humans also produce methane, I am glad that there have not been talks of culling us, yet. It is what one might call extremis green-washing. I am sure by now almost everybody has heard of the phrase published by the World Economic Forum ‘you will own nothing and you will be happy’. We should all be worried.

Many governments, including the Irish government, were successfully lobbied over many years and as a result, millions of tax dollars were spent and continue to be spent. Many commercial enterprises were incentivised by the millions for trading carbon credits. A magical sleigh of hands. Yet there was nothing to show for it. The majority of the world simply laughed and carried on. So we have made a rod for our own backs based on principles and ideologies. Utility bills continue to go up, food prices are up, fuel prices are on the upward trajectory and almost all of us are now shopping on Temu. Thank you China. Not even going to go into inventive taxes. Regrettably, it continues to be the case across the western democracies to date. Some blame woke ideologies on the left, whilst others in Ireland blame the tree-hugging Dublin 4 crowd or the so-called metropolitan elite.

Those in the second camp who have always been a minority voice argued that whilst it is indeed a noble cause to spend millions, nay billions, on many such enterprises such as saving the planet, our environment and enhancing nature for future generations, the mounting costs needed to be justified. Cost-benefit analysis has been the basis of this argument on the whole.

Here in Ireland, peatlands restoration so far only amounts to less than 10% of the peatlands, with the remaining 90% which are mostly in private ownership, left to their own devices. The costs are huge and increasing yet results have been modest shall we say. To be sure, many from the first school of thought, feeling frustrated and utterly impatient with the results so far, wanted to control and force through legislation regardless of ownership rights. Stop ALL forms of peatlands ‘abuse’ as it is coined. No draining, no farming, no cutting turf, etc., breach of which should result in fines, levies, land taxes, duties and ultimately confiscation. Yet no alternatives were offered. In a previous chapter, I posed a question on what happened to bogs in the UK over the past 50 years and who now owns them. A recent investigation found that approximately 500,000 hectares of bogs in England are owned by just 124 highly private and wealthy aristocratic individuals. The remainder are owned by large corporations and private trusts, as well as national organisations like the National Trust. A very small percentage is actually ‘owned’ by private landlords and tenant farmers, which are generally amended low fertile left over scrub lands. A similar question can be asked of other EU countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. As a republic, are we inexorably heading in that direction too?

When we embarked on this journey in 2019, it was a struggle to explain. Boleysillagh Farm was a strange anomaly, and even today, many may still feel the same way.

Yet, over the past 6 years, we have felt a shift in the right direction. The public discourse has been turned towards cost–benefit analysis and economics of spending millions to achieve at best 1mm of peat recovery per year. There is no way of speeding up Mother Nature. The research data suggests that we are looking at approximately 1,000 years to achieve 1 metre deep of peatlands restoration. I presume that many people are now a bit more receptive in the face of such hard data.

So the question posed now is whether there is a pragmatic and practical way that we can restore peatlands as well as achieve economic benefits within our lifetime. That is to say, achieve most (but perhaps not completely) of the goals of carbon sequestration, saving the environment and enhancing nature and biodiversity whilst benefiting local economies in terms of achieving a certain level of food security and even perhaps creation of biomass to meet ever-growing need for fuel and power (but perhaps not completely). A middle path basically.

At Boleysillagh Farm, we posed ourselves that exact question over 10 years ago as we were researching various means of restoring peatlands through agroforestry. We at Boleysillagh Farm are not engaged in politics. We are focused solely on finding practical solutions to the problems we face in the 21st century as human society develops with all its ills and wants. Boleysillagh Farm is merely a grain of sand amongst a universe full of sand, but even at that level, we believe that all ideologies, whether left or right, must be tempered with pragmatism after all.

RESEARCH ARTICLE: Canadian research in phytotechnology in cultivated peatland

RAMSAR Technical Report 11 Peatland rewetting guidelines

Germany EUKI Farming on Peatlands

LIFE Project Orgbalt Rewetted Peatland Agroforestry