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Abstract

The Patchy Peat Solutions Project is into its second phase. Phase 1 (March 2024-2025) was a feasibility study exploring the sustainable farm business opportunities on rewetted lowland agricultural peat across 6 Shropshire/Staffordshire farms (just under 2000 ha of farm holdings, over 600 hectares of which are on lowland agricultural peat). Phase 2 builds on Phase 1, the main objective is to verify and improve the soil and water data to accurately map peat in the area and characterise the hydrology of the farms to determine how water resources might be managed in the landscape for paludiculture and other natural capital related farm business opportunities.

Description

The Patchy Peat Solutions Project+ (PPS+) aims to build on the evidence compiled during the first phase of funding by the Patchy Peat Solutions Project (PPS, LAPWDP-10). PPS was a feasibility study investigating sustainable opportunities on rewetted lowland agricultural peat. PPS+ represents an extension of PPS but also has some new elements relating to the socioeconomics of water management on farm which may be used to inform decisions by farmers and policy regarding land use on the pockets of lowland agricultural peat in Shropshire and Staffordshire. The same 6 partner farms (A-F) involved in the original project have agreed to continue to collaborate on PPS+ allowing for efficiencies in knowledge and the use of existing equipment (see Appendix 2). This provides a critical opportunity to verify measures and provide more detail for the Farm Business Case Studies from the first phase (PPS) and to further develop and cost the rewetting strategies for the pockets of lowland agricultural peat across this landscape.

The findings from the PPS soil and water work package highlighted a number of discrepancies between where the England Peat Map suggested there was lowland peat, and where lowland peat was found. This was based on SOC analysis of soil cores from the fields identified for rewetting, farmer perception as well as innovative techniques for identifying peat including electroconductivity scanning and satellite surveys. The soil work package for the LAPWDP+ extension will improve the accuracy of this data set, and mapping, by employing high intensity spatial analysis of SOC to further identify where these carbon rich soils are, and how deep they are. This will allow more effective monitoring of the condition and restoration of this degraded lowland peat as well as accurate quantification of carbon stocks across the Shropshire/Staffordshire landscape. In turn, this will provide further ground truthing of the England Peat Map and the opportunity to support the benchmarking of satellite technologies in the future. It is anticipated that future projects with a longer time frame could use this data set to explore the volumes of carbon stocks using seismic analysis to determine spatial peat depth.

The management of water across the six focal farms during the first phase was characterised by hydrological modelling by Rigare Ltd. This has provided insight into the supply and retention of water for rewetting and provisional rewetting strategies have been drafted for the lowland agricultural peat on the farms. However, commencement of monitoring of water table height was delayed due to the weather and difficulties accessing fields to establish the network of dipwells. Repeated measurement of water table height across the farms for a full year in this second phase will address gaps in data and provide more accuracy and insight into the infrastructure requirements of the rewetting strategy and how water could be managed and monetised across the six farms.

The Farm Business Case Studies provided in PPS explored the nature of the different farms participating in the project in terms of their economic and environmental sustainability and human, and social capital. This second round of funding will look to build on this and investigate the risks involved in rewetting more fully with the focal farms (and how they may be mitigated), but also across multiple projects in the UK. The socioeconomics work package specifically will build on the work from the first phase to enable farmer engagement and to determine private financing mechanisms.

The management of water across the six focal farms during the first phase was characterised by hydrological modelling by Rigare Ltd. This has provided insight into the supply and retention of water for rewetting and provisional rewetting strategies have been drafted for the lowland agricultural peat on the farms. However, commencement of monitoring of water table height was delayed due to the weather and difficulties accessing fields to establish the network of dipwells. Repeated measurement of water table height across the farms for a full year in this second phase will address gaps in data and provide more accuracy and insight into the infrastructure requirements of the rewetting strategy and how water could be managed and monetised across the six farms.

The Farm Business Case Studies provided in PPS explored the nature of the different farms participating in the project in terms of their economic and environmental sustainability and human, and social capital. This second round of funding will look to build on this and investigate the risks involved in rewetting more fully with the focal farms (and how they may be mitigated), but also across multiple projects in the UK. The socioeconomics work package specifically will build on the work from the first phase to enable farmer engagement and to determine private financing mechanisms.

In terms of natural capital, it was clear that biodiversity and its associated environmental services could provide a real opportunity to financially support the rewetting of lowland agricultural peat. Across the six focal farms, surveys and Biodiversity Metric 4.0 calculations by Middlemarch suggested it was possible to achieve an uplift in biodiversity of 630 Biodiversity Units (BU’s) with a value of just under £17 million. However, these figures are unaudited and require verification to explore them as a realistic opportunity for corporate investment, or for the individual farmers themselves (or as a farmer cluster) via habitat banks. The carbon assessment during phase I was not detailed enough to make any meaningful conclusions regarding carbon stocks which could be traded in a corporate market, so it is important to improve the data set here with high intensity sampling. Assessment of nutrient discharge from the farms is out of scope for this phase of the LAPWDP but could be incorporated into further work relating to private finance for consideration of credit bundling and stacking mechanisms.

In summary, verification and strengthening the data sets from the PPS feasibility study will be the principal objective of this 1-year project. These will be combined with additional new data sets outlined in the work packages below to develop a sustainable mechanism of trading/managing water for rewetting peat in support of farming at higher water tables (paludiculture) or natural capital opportunities. This will be achieved by (i) targeting data gaps identified in all work packages; (ii) verifying existing data sets to improve the success of the proposed rewetting strategies across all six farms and (iii) further exploring private finance mechanisms for the sustainable management of water on lowland peat. 

Reports from Phase 1 and data relevant to the HAU farm may be found here: 

In Phase 1 this project was supported by Dr Jackie Symmons. In Phase 2 it is being supported by Josie Harman.