Paludiculture

Crop selection

This section is not dealing with peat extraction or peat imports into Ireland from as far afield as Belarus. Internet is full of data on that subject. Boleysillagh Farm is only concerned with bog restoration and sympathetic use.

We have covered the practical challenges of restoration and indeed the sad fact that many of the bogs in Ireland are beyond restoration.

The biggest challenge remains re-wetting. Although too much water-logging will still result in carbon CO2 being stored, much worse methane gas CH4 will be produced. The difference between these two greenhouse emission gases are to do with potency and lifespan. Carbon subsists for centuries whereas the more potent methane which is 80+ times more dangerous as a greenhouse emission, is relatively short-lived (10 – 12 years or so) which means methane problem can be tackled quicker in reducing global warming in the short term. Carbon emissions require longer term control to address long term global warming. There is a huge debate amongst scientific community and ideologues as to which is worse. Scientifically methane is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide and methane production has been on the increase. Yet almost all the focus when it comes to paludiculture has been on carbon.

For example, many trials focusses on the type of vegetation/ potential cash crop that can be grown in the peatlands. As a result, the broad definition of paludiculture has been purposefully narrowed from general wetland farming (as in a thousand year old chinampas in Mexico) to specific biomass producing plants such as multi-species swards of mixed grasses and herbs for animal fodder, bulrushes and reeds for building materials, sphagnum moss itself for horticultural use, and edibles like blueberries, cranberries, rhubarb and aronia amongst other potential crops. In Ireland recently, the Green Restoration Ireland is leading these practical trials.

The issue for us at Boleysillagh Farm is that it is essentially a micro-trial site focussed on local community needs rather than on commercial viability of crops which essentially will end up as monoculture crops in bogs with all that entails.

As is always the case with commerce-led trials, discussions are already taking place in parallel and governments are being lobbied for subsidies and grants. Again, public tax dollars. This is because there are currently no markets or industries for these ‘non-edible’ crops. As for edible crops, it would be interesting to scale-up production for harvesting, transport and processing whilst knee deep in bogs and still make money. The only glimmer of hope appears to be with German sphagnum moss trials for horticultural use. Logically, paludiculture is about restoration and preservation of peatlands for carbon sequestration. Growing peat moss on the bogs for restoration and carbon sequestration and then harvesting it for sale appears to be a counter-intuitive misnomer. As for plants like bulrushes (typha)/ cattails, the fact that methane gas CH4 emission goes on hyperdrive (potentially 400%) with these invasive crops in the bogs seems to have been conveniently forgotten. It has to do with how bulrushes decompose and how microbial activity (methanogens) takes place. As bulrushes spreads across wetlands it will eventually become a nuisance for farms. Let us just say there are practical challenges.

Here at Boleysillagh Farm, we focus our trials on soft fruits like blueberries, raspberries and currants. In addition, we are trialling stone fruits (Drupes) such as plums and cherries and pome fruits such as quinces, pears and apples because they act like carbon and methane sinks and need both carbon and methane to grow and bear fruit. For biomass we are trialling short rotation coppicing crops such as willow cultivars.

There you have it. As time progresses, we shall have more data on both bog restoration and our own version of paludiculture through agroforestry.