Climate smart solution for growing media production based on paludiculture

Our aim is to examine climate impacts of the production chain of growing media produced from common reed and reed canary grass grown on wet peat fields to greenhouses, together with the growing media refiner and the greenhouse enterprises.

The goals are 1) to resolve the bottlenecks of the production chains in paludiculture and enable this cultivation method for a number of farmers, 2) to create new businesses around sustainable greenhouse cultivation 3) to promote Finland’s goal for carbon neutrality and 4) to provide consumers the choice of peat-free products.

We will reach these goals by documenting the environmental impacts, especially climate impacts, of the production chain, by assessing economic impacts and by comparing the both of them to peat. This facilitates the branding of the common reed-reed canary grass growing media and encourages farmers to contract as material producers. This model resolves the current problems in harvesting and transporting the plant material and creates local nodes for growing media production.

The climate smart growing media is the solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and peat production and for improving the ecological status of water bodies because 1) perennial plants will be cultivated in greater proportion of peat fields, 2) the ground water level can be raised wherever there are poorly drained fields (paludiculture), 3) the peat mining area will be reduced as the renewable growing media becomes more common, 4) biomass of common reed will harvested from water courses.