In the first trial of its kind in the country, celery is to be grown in a pioneering 'wetter farming' project. The low-calorie vegetable, which helps the digestive and cardiovascular system, is being grown in a project aiming to show how degraded bogs can be restored to capture carbon, bolster biodiversity, and provide an income for farmers.
The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside is behind the pioneering trial, growing celery on an area of re-wetted peatland in Greater Manchester – a trial that is being watched, with interest, by the agricultural community nationally.
Across the UK, large areas of lowland peatlands have been drained and converted to farmland. In Lancashire, Greater Manchester and North Merseyside alone, 98 per cent of our lowland peatlands have been lost to drainage, releasing untold amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
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By re-wetting these drained areas, the carbon emissions can be significantly reduced. However, re-wetting land and restoring it back to natural peat bog is not always financially viable for farmers and landowners, who still need to make money from the land and grow a food crop. But wetter farming could the answer.
Wetter farming, also known as paludiculture, involves re-wetting land and growing crops that can tolerate higher water tables. The pilot project is the first time that anyone in the UK has trialled farming traditional food crops, such as celery, on land with a higher water table.
Research - conducted by Manchester Metropolitan University at the Lancashire Wildlife Trust-owned Winmarleigh carbon farm - has shown an 86 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from an area of re-wet peatland, compared to an area that had been drained and converted to grazing pasture.
Peatlands make up 12% of Britain’s land area and store huge quantities of carbon when in good condition. But just one-fifth of Britain’s peat is in a 'natural' condition. Most is used for grazing livestock, drained for farming or forestry, dug up for horticulture, or burned. An estimated four per cent of all the UK's greenhouse emissions come from degraded peatlands.
Lancashire Peatlands Initiative Project Manager, Sarah Johnson, said: “We know that the current drainage and intensive agricultural use of our lowland peatlands is unsustainable, especially as we are facing a climate emergency.
"Annual emissions from UK peatlands are estimated at 18.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the same as produced by nearly 4 million cars in a year, or 5 coal fired power stations! So, we know that protecting the remaining soil carbon in our peat is paramount, but we also know that much agricultural land still needs to remain productive.”
The site for the three-year trial in Greater Manchester, Rindle Field, near Astley, Wigan, is a 5.4 acre former potato patch which had been drained from peatland and used for agricultural crops. However, the land was often flooded and proving difficult to farm commercially under common intensive agricultural practices.
Mike Longden, senior project officer, said: “We are seeing more and more farmland on peat soils becoming increasingly difficult for farmers to farm using current intensive methods, and this was the case with Rindle Field. This allowed the Wildlife Trust to purchase the land for this pioneering trial project.
"Old field drains and drainage ditches were blocked, and bunds were installed. These low walls of compressed peat form a watertight barrier, which has raised the water table to between 10cm – 50cm below the surface. 85,000 small celery plug plants have now been planted, and their progress will be monitored closely over the summer."
The project is also working with researchers from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) to measure greenhouse gas emissions from the trial site, seeing how re-wetting the peat effects the amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere.
Dr Stephanie Evers, Reader in Wetland Ecology and Biogeochemistry at LJMU, said: "We are leading the research monitoring the greenhouse gas dynamics of the pilot, and are so excited to be working on the first trials of this kind and scale in UK lowland bogs and working towards the development of sustainable peatland farming systems.
"These celery trials represent the first in a number of crops being grown in peat-forming conditions with the aim of developing carbon neutral, or even carbon accumulating novel agricultural alternatives to the current unsustainable practices.”
If the first celery crop is successful in six months’ time, some will be donated to community food banks with the help of a competition for the best celery recipes, with the rest used in nature reserve cafes.
The project has been made possible thanks to funding from Biffa Award. Biffa Award is a multi-million pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives by awarding grants to communities and environmental projects across England and Wales.
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