Professor Hans Joosten:

The point of departure is that from a climate point of view, we have to rewet all peatlands. There is then the question of can we do on these lands from an economic point of view. We should not forget that these lands have been drained for productivity. Of course, when we change our diet substantially and substantially reduce the consumption of meat and dairy, it simply means we will release millions of hectares in the EU that will become available. Even if we keep our diet, we must think about what kind of economic opportunities are on rewetted peatlands. We must simply say there are not so many opportunities for food production on rewetted peatlands. That is no issue. There is also a lot of production of energy crops on mineral soils. It is simply a matter of swapping land use, which is not uncommon. We must focus on crops that bring something.

There are several promising crops. The Chairman mentioned sphagnum moss. There is unlimited demand for sphagnum moss. We have the largest pilot site for sphagnum cultivation and several other things are running. We see there is good demand for things. We must focus on which wetland plants have special characteristics. This is the structure of plants and the specific ingredients. For example, we have farms where sundew is cultivated for medical purposes, etc. We have worked through our sphagnum cultivation economically. It appears that if we can increase productivity with 30%, we can simply compete with fossil peat on the world market. We now use sphagnum that has been collected randomly from the wild. We have a cultivation project and have already achieved an increase in productivity of 40% with selected sphagnum species. This means there is an opportunity to compete on the same prices with market fossil peat. Of course, we can request, as farmers, additional payments for environment achievements such as emission reductions from biodiversity, which would create extra income. I see large perspectives in paludiculture because the products you can cultivate are unique and are exactly what we need for combatting climate change.