Sphagnum Farming
Sphagnum Farming
Objectives of the project
This project aimed to set up the UK’s first Sphagnum moss farms and trial innovative approaches to Sphagnum cultivation. This is critical for sustainability as the cultivated Sphagnum can be used to replace peat, which is an unsustainable product in the growing media industry. It also offers an economically viable land use for damaged peat soils, so reduces carbon emissions from these areas. The project helped prove the concept of using irrigation for Sphagnum farming and fed into the Lowland Agricultural Peat Taskforce set up by DEFRA to inform future wetland agriculture policy in England.
Information on the project
- Lowland peatlands are incredibly rich in biodiversity and offer many ecosystem services. However, they have been destroyed by peat extraction to produce peat-based growing media, which is used to grow plants in containers.
- This is an unsustainable practice as peat accumulates very slowly at 1mm per year when they are in a healthy condition. Peat extraction removes the surface vegetation, drains the peat, and causes 300mm of peat to be removed from the surface every year, vastly quicker than it accumulates.
- However, Sphagnum is a key peat-forming plant. It grows quickly, and can be used to produce a quality, sustainable peat-free growing media. This replaces the need to damage lowland peatlands and offers a sustainable land use going forward.
- The project has shown that Sphagnum farming can protect peatlands for future with our unique, sustainable and scalable methods (patented).
- Supports Net-Zero for farmers and agriculture with this economic crop.
Partners
- University of East London
- Sustainability Research Institute
- Manchester Metropolitan University
- Melcourt Industries Ltd
- Lancashire Wildlife Trust
- FreshGro Ltd
- Cornwall College
- Eden Project
- Nottingham Trent University
- Blackbrook Longhorns
- Natural England
Project Leads
- BeadaMoss®
Funders
- Innovate UK
- BBSRC