Thread by @IrelandsFarmers

Thread. I might be sorry, but I am going to start a thread on peat. Peat has been a mainstay of lots of horticultural production for the best part of a century. About thirty years ago I began hearing concerns about its future, due to sustainability issues.

2. There were issues around habitat loss, and greenhouse gas emissions. However, given that we in Ireland were extracting so much for burning (about 50 times more than for horticulture, despite the fact we were exporting lots of horticultural peat),

3. I didn’t see why horticultural peat should be an issue. However, I did notice that in some countries, like the Netherlands, that growers were beginning to work with alternative materials, especially in fruit production, which is an important industry there.

4. About a year ago most extraction of peat in Ireland came to a sudden halt, with the decision of Bord na Móna to stop harvesting , not because of the greens in government, but due to a high court decision in relation to planning permission: irishtimes.com/business/energ…

5. If you want to read more about the Friends of the Irish Environment case, you can do so here:
greennews.ie/bnm-ending-pea…

6. By my reckoning, this was coming, but it is an awful pity that some planning wasn’t put into it, given that there remain some sectors of horticulture in Ireland, particularly mushroom production, that have not found an alternative to peat.

7. I say this especially since even a single years extraction by Bord na Mona at its former scale, would provide enough horticultural peat for use in Ireland for more than 100 years.

8. So now we have run into a crisis, and not for the first time, due to lack of planning. And the blame game is well and truly on:

9. Those who need peat tend to blame “the greens”. Those with a more nuanced view blame the lack of planning in developing alternatives or keeping extraction going at a micro-scale. There was a protest at government buildings this week.

10. And because of the lack of alternatives, Ireland imported 3600 tonnes of peat a few weeks ago. This made headlines, and every grower would have the figure on the tips of their tongues, but not the 430,000 tonnes we exported from January to June this year.

11. As @taesaveslives tweeted earlier this week, this issue is a parallel to other conflicts between the environmental and agricultural lobbies, and he made some very valid points:

https://twitter.com/TaeSavesLives/status/1448309481356546050

12. I can only offer discourse as a solution. And it’s easy for me, as there are alternatives such as coir that most soft fruit growers adopted in the past decade, and I am using that too. So I'm a sideline hurler.

Ends: There’s a few facts to bear in mind:
Horticultural peat is a minor use of the product in Ireland.
All peat that can be kept in the ground rather than harvested should be.
Despite how it looks, this will be one of the easier agricultural/environmental challenges to resolve.