The future should lie in the middle of a triangle between Oldenburg, Weserufer and Jadebusen: 18 hectares of swampy marshland, in the middle of the agricultural landscape. Peat management, environmentalists and peat bog scientists hope that this spot will provide solutions for the time after the peat has been removed. Because just as solar and wind power serve as climate-friendly successors to coal, peat would also have to be replaced – because it comes from moor areas. For mining, peatlands are drained and destroyed. This is not only an ecological problem, but also a climate protection problem.
Around five percent of Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions are due to destroyed and exploited moors. A healthy bog preserves dead plants and the carbon stored in them in the moist soil over millennia and grows up to a millimeter in height every year. If the bog is dried out, air reaches the ground and the stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere as CO₂ – much faster than it can ever be absorbed again.
Peat extraction is only a small part of the problem, especially in Germany, which was once rich in bogs, much larger drained bog areas are used as fields or pastures. According to experts, around 80 percent of moorland emissions come from agriculture. But peat also needs to be replaced. The alternative could be called sphagnum, also known as peat moss – this is basically the top layer of a bog. The cultivation of peat moss shortly before the German North Sea coast has been busy for about ten years.
Sphagnum farming in Lower Saxony.
(Photo: Martin Häusler)
Also out of self-interest, the plant substrate manufacturer Moorkultur Ramsloh has left these 18 hectares to research. A few decades ago the area was still part of a raised bog, then it was degraded to a cow meadow, at the end it was restored to paludiculture – this is what experts call the management of wet bog areas. On different plots, scientists are testing which peat moss is the best, how fast it grows and how best to harvest it. Among them is Greta Gaudig from the University of Greifswald. “In terms of quality, peat moss biomass is the best peat substitute there is in the world because it has similar properties,” she says.
Eight million cubic meters of peat are processed in Germany every year. Almost half goes to hobby gardeners, the slightly larger part to professional plant breeding. To replace this, around 100,000 hectares of peat moss would have to be grown. That would be roughly the area of raised bog meadows that, according to Gaudig, would be suitable for rewetting in Lower Saxony. According to Gaudig, such a paludiculture would have two advantages in one: peat substitute cultivation with simultaneous moor protection. But the road to get there is long and rocky.
Mining peat is incredibly cheap
Because the greenhouses for plant breeding now functioned like high-performance factories, explains moor researcher Hans Joosten. Whether ornamental plants, vegetables or berries, on time and in the ideal stage of development, the products would be expected in the millions in the supermarkets. “That can only work if you have the entire production always and completely under control. This is where the substrates come into play. Unfortunately, peat is the coolest material that can be used for substrates.” Thus, the porosity of the peat helps hold water, but also ensures that the roots get enough oxygen. In contrast to compost, peat also contains next to no nutrients and therefore offers the ideal basis for every substrate manufacturer. In addition, peat is very acidic. With the addition of lime, the pH level can be adjusted very precisely. And: mining peat is incredibly cheap. It is not easy to find a climate-friendly alternative that can keep up.
Hans Joosten had already pointed out in a newsletter of the international moor protection network IMCG at the end of the nineties that peat was by no means a renewable raw material, as the peat industry argued at the time, but on the contrary works like a millennia-old CO₂ storage system. “The conscious use of such pseudoscience to influence EU energy tax policy is not a contribution to a factual discussion, but a cynical attempt to avoid taxes,” wrote Joosten.
That had consequences. He was threatened with legal action from Finland, where peat is still used as an energy source. Joosten’s stance would threaten thousands of jobs. The native of the Netherlands also remembers a phone call from a federal authority: If he were to write such an essay again, it would be ensured that he would never receive a professorship in Germany. He got one anyway, in Greifswald, and rose to become an expert in worldwide moor research. This year Joosten retired, but is still working on the development of paludiculture with a working group from the university. “The peat industry is the last hunter and gatherer to roam the world, from one exhausted bog to another,” he says.
The industry is coming under increasing pressure
A good half of the peat used in Germany is imported, mainly from the Baltic States. Klasmann-Deilmann GmbH from Geeste in Lower Saxony is one of the world’s largest suppliers of peat and substrates, and this company also extracts large quantities of peat there. For some time now, peat-reduced substrate mixtures have also been in the range: wood and coconut fibers, green waste compost or granular perlite of volcanic origin. “Beyond that, there is not much new to see on the horizon,” says company spokesman Dirk Röse. The group currently considers the use of peat moss as a raw material to be uneconomical. And anyway: “If you have a wonderfully functioning raw material and meet the associated environmental requirements, there is initially no reason to completely abandon it.”
But at least in Germany, the end of peat extraction is foreseeable. Most mining licenses will expire in the next 15 years. A peat reduction strategy is part of the federal government’s climate protection program. In the summer of 2020, Federal Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner called on construction and supermarket chains to take peat-containing potting soil out of their range on a voluntary basis. In addition to peat moss, bulrushes or fiber nettles are also discussed as possible alternatives.
Last year, the Garden Industry Association (IVG) published a voluntary commitment: Alternative raw materials are to increase to 50 percent in hobby soils by 2025 and to 20 percent in professional growing media. Both values should reach 70 and 30 percent by 2030. More is not possible under the current conditions. If farmers wanted to switch to peat moss cultivation today, they would lose their right to agricultural subsidies, argues the IVG. Hardly anyone would take the risk.
The geographer Bernd Hofer, whose landscape planning company counts both IVG and environmental associations among his customers, advises that all interest groups “have to come to the table without reservation and taboos” – many are now calling for such a “peat summit”. With regard to the substrate industry, Hofer recommends a policy with moderation, otherwise there is a risk of relocation abroad. “Russia in particular has gigantically large mining areas. This step towards it is already recognizable. It does not help the climate.”
A law in Lower Saxony prevents pastures from being rededicated to paludiculture
In the meantime, the family business Moorkultur Ramsloh im Dreieck in the Wesermarsch can harvest and sell at least a small amount of peat moss every year. Authorized signatory and horticultural engineer Silke Kumar says that peat moss can replace white peat one to one if it can be produced in large quantities. “But I don’t think Germany will become the market leader. I see it more in the Baltic States and Scandinavia.” On the one hand, there would be much more space available there. On the other hand, there is a fundamental problem with politics in Germany. “On the one hand, it promotes research, but completely neglects the legal basis.” In Lower Saxony, this is also due to the ban on plowing up grassland, which prevents cow pastures from being rededicated in moor-friendly paludiculture. Above all, the Ministry of Agriculture has to move, says Silke Kumar. “Where is the proportionality? Our product is needed to produce food.” Agriculture must finally do its part.
The Lower Saxony Agriculture Minister Barbara Otte-Kinast (CDU) was on site in the spring to take a look at sphagnum farming – and she promised to help. When asked, the Ministry in Hanover stated that the federal state was “very interested” in further developing peat moss cultivation. But what are the necessary framework conditions for this? They can then be created nationally.