Water

Food production in the Fens: navigating towards Net Zero?

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Reposting here an article that I wrote recently for the International Peatland Society’s (IPS) Peatlands International (PI) quarterly publication. You can get access to the full publication (after becoming a member), access the back-catalogue for free, and find out who to contact if you want to write for PI here. I post this with thanks to Prof. Sue Page, for commenting on the drafted version, and to Susann Warnecke, for sending me to the FenlandSOIL gathering on behalf of the IPS, and generally for running the IPS ship so fantastically.

If you have ever enjoyed a fresh salad grown on English shores, it is likely to have comprised ingredients harvested from the Fens. A third of the country’s fresh vegetable produce comes from this region; an area of c. 3,900 km2, rich in peat. The Fens, situated across the counties of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, and small parts of Suffolk and Norfolk, comprise lowland agricultural peat soils, the working of which generates some £3 billion each year and employs over 80,000 people. These people and resident communities share this region with 13,000 species of plants and animals, which live within and outside of the agricultural matrix.

Another key characteristic of the Fens is that its use in food production is “an obstacle” to achieving Net Zero by 2050. Centuries of farming in this peat-rich landscape has led to vast, largely unquantified carbon emissions and to extensive wastage of the peat soil. With United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signatory nations now required to measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions across different sources in line with their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to mitigating climate change, emissions from farming peat soils need to be addressed.

Cue the formation of FenlandSOIL: a cross-sectoral group tasked with exploring how farming in the Fens can be achieved in a carbon-neutral way. This farmer-led consortium was established in 2021, and now has over 80 members from the farming community, academic institutions, and multiple other public and private sector organisations.

One of the FenlandSOIL associated partnerships is that between the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and UK-based supermarket chain, Tesco. The goal of their collaboration, and of the FenlandSOIL consortium, is to answer the billion-dollar question: can we mitigate emissions whilst maintaining food production?

Professor Chris Evans presenting research to try to answer the
question of: “Can we mitigate emissions while maintaining food
production?”

On 17th and 18th April, 2023, over 200 delegates gathered to explore this question, in the small city of Ely in East Cambridgeshire, perched on an island of hard sandstone within a fenland scape. Over the two days, attendees had a chance to mix with individuals from UK Government agencies, universities (including the key collaborators from the University of Cambridge), the National Farmers Union of England and Wales, Wildlife Trusts, supermarket chains, farm equipment suppliers, and an inspiring mix of others.

Panellists discussing peatland management in the Fens. Note the absence of
females amongst the panellists!

Alongside the incoming Scientific Officer, Dr Örjan Berglund, I was fortunate to attend this fascinating, inspiring, and at times frustrating meeting of minds on behalf of the International Peatland Society. After attending the two days of presentations, observing smaller group discussions and conversing with a range of different stakeholders in the conference breaks, I identified some common themes that seemed to emerge in this cross-sectoral space. Here are some of my learnings from the event:

  • No ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to developing interventions that will reduce emissions whilst enabling the food production to continue across farms in this peat-rich landscape. We need a framework to support the development of local solutions, which are bottom-up….
  • …and farmer-led. Of course, there is no one size of farmer, with each having a different relationship with the landscape they are farming, but every farmer will have knowledge and experience of that multidimensional space, which must feed heavily into each stage of intervention planning and practice. The depth of knowledge, understanding and passion of farmers attending the meeting was evident. Their voices must be present and centred in policy-facing discussions.
  • One skill-set farmers are often lacking is that required to carry out effective carbon management, being a relatively new role that the already hyper-skilled individuals are being tasked to take on. One farmer I spoke to was confused as to what the best approach to reducing emissions was for his farm – with his particular production system and land cover – after listening to multiple presentations advertising different emissions outcomes of different interventions for diverse production systems on different farms. An evidence-based approach is needed.
  • There was a call for that evidence-base to focus on “field-scale trials and innovations”; a continuation of the no ‘one size fits all’ principle. When evidence is often place-specific, incomplete, and associated with many uncertainties, packaging it into useful guidance for farmers is one of the ultimate challenges.
  • But whatever specificity of interventions are proposed, monitoring the changes in emissions, food production, soil health, species abundance, etc., and reporting those verified changes is essential, i.e., MRV – a feasible and effective Monitoring, Reporting and Verification procedure. We need to have standard, transparent, and feasible ways of assessing whether interventions are going any way to reducing GHG emissions over time, whilst not jeopardizing food production, livelihoods and other emergent properties of these systems.
  • The somewhat unpredictable elephant in the room – which could undermine even the most well-designed peatland carbon management plans – is climate change. This is seen as a large risk to food production and to climate change mitigation interventions. We need to understand more about how future climatic drying and erratic weather patterns may influence peatland ecosystem health, in order that current and near-future investments in restoring wasted peats are not themselves wasted.
  • The best way of climate-proofing any peatland is to manage the water table. There were plenty of discussions on storage, sharing, and managing risks associated with water across the Fens. From being a resource in abundant supply in this wetland-scape in the past, the lack of water resulting from hundreds of years of drainage is now a significant risk. Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs) are now the institutions who wield the power in these agricultural landscapes; they are in charge of decisions that can determine the economic and literal productivity of farms through water abstraction licencing. Although with transformative consequences on farming, imminent reform in licencing to reduce the exploitation of river water may create opportunities for peatland restoration. However that reform manifests, a short-term reduction in demand for water is needed across the Fens, alongside long-term local planning of water resource management, where the restoration of rivers to “good ecological status” is set as the achievable goal. As an aside, we were also reminded that water-level management in drains is not the same as water-table management in fields; each process plays a separate, yet interconnected role in peat soil conservation and food production.
  • The IDBs are, of course, not acting independently but in line with national legal frameworks for water management. When it comes to policies, Government intervention, be it through legislation or financial support, is seen as a double-edged sword. Although it may not be clear how the Government could support a strategy for food production in the Fens and the variety of lowland peatlands across the UK, there were proposals for how top-level support could reduce barriers to farming in these landscapes. There were discussions relating to England’s reformulated agricultural payment schemes, e.g., the post-Brexit Environmental Land Management scheme (ELMs), and how multiples of these could be ‘stacked’ together on one farm to increase the resources available to farmers to manage these complex landscapes. Where do farmers get the equipment, the seed-stocks, and other materials and expertise (in some cases) necessary for restoring their peatlands? Could logistical barriers also be reduced through policy change?
Örjan Berglund presenting his research.

  • Or ultimately, is the lack of financial support the key challenge? Certainly, comments were made about the current lack of financial models that account for low-emissions farming practices on peatlands. We need a financial vision and framework, to accompany a logistical one.
  • One of these frameworks is carbon financing, and more specifically, the Peatland Code 2.0. The IUCN UK Peatland Programme has worked to revise this standardised procedure for valuing the carbon held in peatlands under protection, with areas of the Fens now eligible for financial investment through the voluntary carbon market under this scheme.
  • Regenerative agriculture is the future, we are told! I would like to believe this. But I am unsure what this is, exactly, and what it might look like in lowland peatland settings. I was reminded of the need to carefully define the terms we are using, lest they become straw men and lose their meaning, and thus power.
  • Whilst sharing learning and experiences across peatland regions can be valuable, we also need to appreciate the unique nature of the Fens. Lowland peatlands behave differently to those in the uplands; the latter being the subject of the majority of financial calculations and modelling for restoration. Lowland peatlands themselves come in a wide range of shapes and sizes….
  • Nuance matters. Variability in soil characteristics, water availability, and management practices across space and through time in the Fens need to be accounted for in any planning and practice. For example, the volume of Nitrous oxide emissions resulting from agriculture on peatlands may depend on the crop being cultivated and its in-field management; this detail matters.
The Great Ouse river running out into the Fens surrounding the town of Ely.

To enable continued food production from the UK’s lowland peatlands, whilst mitigating (to some extent) carbon emissions from damaged peat soils, we need action now. We need a framework for local solutions. We need a field-scale, mosaic approach to interventions. We need to connect up communities and sectors across IDBs, and landscapes. And we need to create opportunities for social innovation. The FenlandSOIL gathering made an inspiring start.

Dr Lydia Cole
Coordinator of IPS Expert Group Peatlands and Biodiversity, University of St Andrews
lesc1@st-andrews.ac.uk

Happy World Wetlands Day!

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Today is a day to celebrate and spread the word about our world’s wonderful wetlands.

Borrowed from the World Wetlands Day website. (Thank you!)

On this day 46 years ago, the Convention on Wetlands was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar.  Since then, the 2nd February has marked the signing of this Ramsar Convention: “an international treaty that provides the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources”.

Wetlands are increasingly acknowledged for their importance in controlling the quality and quantity of water flowing across landscapes, as reflected by the theme of this year’s World Wetlands Day: Wetlands for Disaster Risk Reduction.  They are also important for biodiversity conservation, for filtering pollutants from water supplies and of course our magnificent peatlands are critical for sequestering and storing atmospheric carbon (in their intact form).

Perhaps it’s time for a World Peatlands Day?

To celebrate the day and how peatland management has changed in the UK and Ireland over the last few generations, from predominantly extraction to conservation, here is a poem by Seamus Heaney:

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.




Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down




Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.




The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.




By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.




My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.




The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.




Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

My name is PEAT!

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(Thank you, RSPB website.)

I stumbled/googled upon this a few days ago, and thought it was too good to go unreported.  Led by the rap artist, Ed Holden, a bunch of superstars from Pentrefoelas and Ysbyty Ifan Schools (had to copy and paste those names) have joined forces to show us all how important looking after our peatlands is.  It is half in Welsh.  And it is wholly inspired.

Of a slightly different tone,  The Importance of Scotland’s Peatlands also hit the big (YouTube) screen at the start of the month.  Another informative watch if you feel your knowledge of peat is wanting.

And whilst I’m posting about creative projects that can spread information and inspire interest for these precious ecosystems, here is the winner of the World Wetlands Day Poetry Prize: In My Other Life, by Virginia Creer.

Maji ni Uhai

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IMG_3395  IMG_3403

A boy that we interviewed in the village of Mihembe, Mtwara District in southern Tanzania, showing us the slow process of filling buckets with water (see the right photo for ones he prepared earlier), from a pool of cloudy water that stagnates at the bottom of a hand-dug hole.

I gave quite a different lecture last week to any I’ve given before.  Though I wasn’t particularly nervous, I was gleaning with sweat.  My audience sat in front of me on plastic chairs, of a size that I would definitely get my bottom stuck in if I even tried to sit down.  The wide-eyed onlookers gave an impression of being interested, at least to start with.  Their ages ranged from three years to around twelve, excluding the patient teachers.  They all belonged to the Christian Missionary School, set up to educate the next generation of God “fearing” individuals living in the middle-class commuter belt of Dar es Salaam*.  (In response to my concerned enquiry, I was told that fearing actually meant respecting/understanding.  OK.)  Though the students are taught in English from Nursery, my strange accent & vocabulary may have introduced a bit of confusion and my blinding colour been a source of distraction.  I think the students in the bigger chairs at the back probably understood 50+% of what I said and provided plenty of (mostly) appropriate answers to my many questions.  Importantly, everyone got the message about being a tree when I asked them to.  After explaining who I was (I thought it best to miss off the tropical peat swamp forest palaeoecologist role), I tried to convey to them how important the environment is and the different ways we’re hurting it and the many animals that live ‘inside’.  A highlight for me came when a three year old, some 10 minutes after I’d asked what animals I might find in the (tiny – yet containing lions, giraffes, other big animals that I’d prefer weren’t there) zoo somehow around the corner, stuck his hand up to proudly announce “horse”.  At that point, I was reassured that my conservation message was being conveyed loud & clear.

Anyway, once my talk/animal showcase was over, the real education began.  My host, Hilda, showed them all a great documentary she had helped to produce: Maji ni Uhai – Water is Life in Kiswahili.  It tells the story of water: where it comes from & goes to, what it’s used for & why it’s disappearing, with a particular focus on the Great Ruaha River catchment (obviously a worthy cause).  I found it quite overwhelming to see all of the challenges the river is currently facing in maintaining a clean (enough) flow from source to sea, with extraction of water for agricultural irrigation, small-scale arable farming, livestock ranches big & small, and the multiple sources of pollution.  But the film was inspiringly optimistic in offering solutions: turn off taps, don’t chop down trees – plant them, don’t drop rubbish (a particular Bugbear of mine), amongst others.  Promisingly, the students could recall some of these actions afterwards, as well as the animals that had featured in the film, ofcourse.  Hopefully they’ll remember and conserve both.

Another Guest Lecturer experience to add to my CV.

*So I’m in Tanzania….more on that later.