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Irish exports of peat are more than 11 times more than imports, because people are increasingly worried about insufficient supplies in the domestic gardening sector.
According to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CSO) to Noteworthy, the survey platform of the Wall Street Journal, peat exports have far exceeded imports in the past 20 years.
This includes the past two years, because a landmark High Court decision effectively forced the horticultural peat industry to stop harvesting overnight. The department provides growing materials for various industries, including mushrooms, fruit producers and professional plant growers.
Although exports have historically accounted for most of the Irish horticultural peat market, it is worth noting that as part of its PEAT'S SAKE investigation, the task of investigating the use of horticultural peat is not the task of inspecting exports as part of its duties.
Aerial drone images of large-scale peat harvesting operations in Ireland. Source: Corkscrew/Shutterstock
Since the early 2010s, after a long legal and planning struggle, the 2019 High Court’s ruling clearly stated that companies engaged in large-scale peat extraction require planning permits and EPA permits, both of which involve a thorough environmental assessment process required by EU law The impact of peat mining on climate and biodiversity.
Most of the peat harvest for horticulture takes place in the central region, which has most of Ireland’s unique raised swamps, which today make up half of the entire raised swamp network in Europe.
Almost all major companies in the industry have no planning permission or license-Bord na Mona is the only company with an EPA license to date-throwing the industry into chaos.
This issue has been recognized by the industry itself. In a document submitted to the Oireachtas Committee in February 2021, Growing Media Ireland, which represents most horticultural peat producers, stated that no company has a plan for peat harvesting. “If they continue to do so, they will Outside operations".
After the ruling, the industry widely called for urgent legislative reforms to allow them to harvest again in 2022, as the peat stocks that have been harvested have been reduced, which puts the 477 million euros horticulture industry in a crisis of growth medium supply.
Bord na Mona provides garden plant growers with almost all peat for composting, but announced in January 2021 that it has ended all peat harvesting operations on its land, and it is expected that the reserves will be exhausted by the end of May.
The mushroom industry relies on the use of a thin layer of peat casings on top of high-quality compost to ensure that mushrooms grow in an even manner. Walsh Mushrooms stated in its review report for the use of peat in horticulture for 2020 that the industry “relies entirely on peat in its current form to operate”.
After recently imported a large amount of peat from the Baltic Sea region and arrived in Drogheda port in September, this concern finally attracted widespread media attention.
The peat was shipped to Krassman-Dellman near the border between Longford and Westmeath. The company describes itself as a leading conglomerate in the international substrate industry in Europe, Asia and America.
The report on this shipment triggered a wave of calls from national politicians to pass emergency legislation to allow the industry to resume harvesting in 2022.
Since 2021, Ireland has imported 42,800 tons of peat, valued at 7.3 million euros. The vast majority are from Northern Ireland, followed by the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus.
The analysis of CSO data shows that demand for imports has increased, with imports so far this year more than twice the sum of imports in 2019 and 2020.
This is also the highest import volume in the past 20 years. Although there were also large imports before the 2019 High Court ruling, nearly 20,000 tons and 25,000 tons of peat products were imported in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
According to Irish growth media reports, the industry is now worried about insufficient supply of materials needed by the professional gardening and mushroom industries.
The industry group claimed that it is worth noting that the stock after the High Court’s ruling at the end of 2019 “has been exhausted and the only viable source of horticultural peat currently is imported peat”.
It said: "Imported peat has a clear impact on the environment... Compared to harvesting Irish peat, Irish gardeners have higher direct costs and rely on 17,000 jobs in the industry."
However, the import figures are still dwarfed by the number of peat products exported from Ireland. So far this year, more than 500,000 tons of peat products worth 94 million euros have left the country-11.5 times the level of imports.
In 2020, when the industry had already warned of a shortage in the industry, Ireland exported 919,371 tons of peat.
According to a noteworthy briefing issued in June 2021, this is 10 times that of the domestic horticultural market, which was prepared for Pippa Hackett, Minister of State of the Department of Agriculture (DAFM).
The commercial horticultural peat industry has always focused on exports. According to DAFM, 10% of all peat extracted in Ireland was historically harvested for gardening, and 90% of it was exported as ground peat or mushroom shells.
This has been confirmed by the industry. In the documents submitted to the 2020 review of the use of peat for horticulture, Bulrush, one of the largest companies in the industry, stated that the industry “exists to provide an export market for substrates”.
Klasmann-Deilmann also stated that Irish industry “if there is no export market, it will actually cease to exist” and estimates that 95% of its peat exports are exported. "With few exceptions, the industry's revenue mainly comes from exports," it said.
However, it is worth noting that the CSO data analyzed by CSO does not distinguish between the different types of peat exported, and it is not clear what percentage of exports are suitable for use by the professional gardening sector.
For example, a large portion of exports in 2020 and 2021 are to the UK, which is the main market for hobby or hobby peat products, such as horticultural compost, which usually does not meet the standards required by the professional industry.
Growing Media Ireland stated in a noteworthy statement that the total export figures were "greatly exaggerated" because these figures include a mix of peat and substitutes.
In addition, it said that until recently, domestic stocks were still depleted, and the figures for the whole year "will be very different because exports collapsed and imports soared in the second half of the year."
However, it is worth noting that the detailed international trade data for 2020 and 2021 do show that just this month, the supply of professional-grade peat for mushrooms and other specialized industries has been exported to North American customers.
In addition, CSO data shows that exports to the Netherlands, South Africa and Israel in 2020 and 2021 are large. It is well known that the mushroom industry in these countries is the destination of Irish peat products.
Concerns about imports have become the main topic of the stakeholder working group established earlier this year to study the future use of peat in the horticulture industry.
The working group includes industry representatives, such as commercial mushroom producers, Irish Growth Media and Irish Farmers Association (IFA), as well as environmental groups Bord na Mona, agricultural research organization Teagasc, and independent scholars and experts.
The report of the group is coordinated by its chairman, Dr. Munu Prasad, the former chief scientist of Bordena Mona, and is currently awaiting release with Minister of State Malcolm Noonan.
It is worth noting that a version of the final report, the content of which was widely circulated in the media this week, called for the phasing out of peat in gardening by 2035 and the provision of alternative materials.
The report also highlights the regulations that allow “continuation of harvesting from the existing'ecologically damaged' swamps” as long as they are ready for harvesting.
This will require changes to existing legislation to allow large-scale mining, which the report says is "absolutely vital for the 2022 season" and recommends that new legislation be "prioritized" by the end of this year.
The report also recommended that the import of peat "should only be carried out under special circumstances, such as to make up for shortages." However, the report made very little mention of exports, and only briefly compared the scale of export trade with the needs of the domestic market.
According to a spokesperson for the Friends of the Environment of Ireland (FIE), until recently, the level of exports still in the working group "undermines the validity of the working group's report."
The organization stated that its representatives were “convinced that no major exports occurred.” The organization recently withdrew from the organization due to this issue.
"[We] cannot support the recommendations of the working group, they only care about how to bypass the law and continue mining peat until the transition in 2035," the organization claimed.
FIE sent an email to the chairman, Dr. Prasad, in October, outlining the latest CSO data at the time showing that peat exports were large from January to July.
In the same day's reply, with a copy of the official from the Ministry of Housing, Dr. Prasad told FIE that “exporting peat from Ireland is not within the purview of my working group”.
It is worth noting that Dr. Prasad asked for comment, but he stated that the department instructed him "not to comment on the report until the Minister of Nunan has officially approved the report and issued it."
The department was also asked to comment on this point and stated that although it will not comment on the report before it is released, "the chairman is correct to say that peat exports are not within the group’s purview."
According to Teagasc, the switch to peat-free production will require “a lot of research and development on a range of alternatives,” and the Ministry of Agriculture has funded many projects to find alternatives and partial peat substitutes.
It’s worth mentioning that as part of its PEAT SAKE investigation into the peat industry in the coming months, more articles will be published as it delves into law enforcement issues and as we transition from logging to our precious peatlands Future uses.
This article was written by Niall Sargent of Noteworthy. It was proposed and funded by you, our readers.
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