FarmPEAT Updated Final Report and Summary Report
This week for St. Patrick's Day we are celebrating the very Irish themes of Peatlands and Agriculture - or more specifically agriculture on peat soils. WSI were the lead partner in the FarmPEAT EIP project which ran for 4 years and worked with over 50 farmers in the midland raised bog landscape, including farmers around Clara Bog, Raheenmore Bog and Ballynamona Bog. St. Patrick must have been very familiar with raised bogs as Ireland would have had great expanses of intact raised bogs at the time he was here. In fact, some people believe that he used, not Shamrock (Trifolium dubium), but Bog Bean (Menyanthes trifoliata), to illustrate the Holy Trinity!
The FarmPEAT EIP Final Report and Summary Report have both recently been updated. The FarmPeat EIP Final Report is available to view here and the summary report is available to view here. The final report has been updated on the DAFM website.
The FarmPEAT EIP was one of the initial steps that the government took to begin to investigate the possibilities of some element of peat soil restoration on agricultural lands. This work focussed on working with farmers who farmed land surrounding the raised bogs in the midlands of Ireland. FarmPEAT participant farmers trialled methods of farming their peat soils which would enhance their sustainability and environmental value. The sustainability of farming drained peat soils was highlighted by hydrogeologist and FarmPEAT Steering Group member, Donal Daly, in his 2023 briefing note which explains how drained peat soils are a ‘wasting asset’ disappearing before our eyes. You can read Donal’s paper here.
The FarmPEAT EIP was one of two EIPs that were set up to trial methods of reducing the carbon emissions from farmed peat soils (the other was the Farm Carbon EIP). These were an important first step in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 80,000ha of agricultural peat soils, which remains the current target under the Ireland Climate Action Plan. The learnings from these EIPs will be important when scaling up from the pilot projects. Read our Final Report and Summary Report for the key learnings from FarmPEAT – see below for our Key Messages!
Shamrock
Bog Bean