Dr. James Moran:

I agree with the statement last week that there are significant opportunities here, particularly within the farm peatlands project in the midlands. This is looking at scoring systems for grasslands on reclaimed raised bog areas. The indicators they have used are basically wet plant indicators. The more these wet plant indicators are present within the field, the more the farmer gets paid. They also look at indicators in terms of the depth of the water table. We know from natural peatlands systems, particularly fenlands, that as long as we can keep the water table within 25 cm of the surface of the ground for the entire year - that is the lowest level it can go to - we are retaining a lot of the carbon storage at depth within the soil.

We will have to essentially raise the water table to that level across the landscape in these areas in the midlands, which will give rise to difficulties in terms of having grassland or grazing on these at the shoulders of the year in particular. It might reduce the amount of grazing time on these lands. We have to adapt our farming systems in light of this. It might require lowering the intensity of grazing on the farm as a whole but if the farmers are getting paid for the carbon storage and sequestration and other benefits in terms of biodiversity and water storage on this land, it should not impact on the economic potential of these communities if we design it well and actually should favour them and improve their potential in terms of the multiple additional services that would be provided in terms of water services, nature services, carbon and climate services as well as possibly lower-intensity food production services. We have a similar situation with regard to blanket bogs in the west of Ireland-----