Plan to cut farming on 80,000ha of peat soils

The Department of Agriculture is now assessing how it will manage to get thousands of farmers on drained peat soils to rewet, cut stocking rates or spread less fertiliser over the coming years.

The options are among a range of extensification measures earmarked for “rapid” rollout across 80,000ha of farmed peat soils by 2030, in a bid to meet the land use sector’s climate targets.

The Climate Action Plan commits to reducing the management intensity of 80,000ha of grasslands on drained organic soils over the next six years.

This equates to over half of the entire area of effectively drained agricultural peat soils – some 140,000ha in total.

Estimates of the area of effectively drained farmland on peat soils had sat around 340,000ha, until Teagasc research determined that two-thirds of the peat soils that were drained at some point over recent decades, have effectively returned to a rewetted state.

The Department has said that its plans must also consider the “protection” of the 200,000ha of farmland deemed to have reverted to a rewet state when pushing ahead with its plans to reduce management intensity on 80,000ha of drained peat soils.

Last Thursday, peatland experts were consulted on implementing the 80,000ha target at a Department-organised “closed, invite-only workshop”.

The experts were shown a presentation which set out intermediate extensification targets of 10,000ha of farmed peat soils this year, 30,000ha next year and 55,000ha by 2027.

Reduced management intensity

The agenda of that workshop lists the following practices as qualifying as “reduced management intensity”:

Rewetting was noted to be the “most valuable in terms of CO2 emission reductions” and the agenda flagged the possibility of changing the 80,000ha reduced management intensity target to a rewetting target.

Compliance

This would double the emissions reduction, which could be needed as planned measures, including those for farmed peats, restoring cutover bog, afforestation and tillage management, will not be sufficient for the State’s compliance with EU rules on land use emissions.