"Peatlands like this one here...
are absolute climate wonders!"
They store insane amounts of carbon in their soil.
"But we, being stupid humans, are
destroying them at a CRAZY rate."
Mostly to plant crops.
But that releases enormous amounts of CO2.
"But there is no need. Because we can do both:
Save one of the most effective carbon storages in the world
and farm them at the same time."
To find out how that is supposed to work, we came here.
A farm in Germany's east.
All of this used to be conventional, so dry, farmland.
But in 2015, it got turned back into peatlands, so wet farmland.
And this is the guy in charge of it all.
Sebastian Petri.
Meaning, he rewetted his 107 hectares completely.
Petri mainly grows marsh grasses to sell as horse feed.
But operating in the wet, you need something...
well...
"Ok, these two things definitely
don't look like your average tractor."
It's a former snowcat that used to groom ski runs.
It needed to be completely rebuilt.
And the whole thing was shrunk by more than a meter in width.
A pretty expensive custom job,
costing more than 250,000 euros.
And that's just the equipment.
To keep his fields wet, Petri also needed
to completely close down his drainage system
that runs through his fields.
The solution was quite simple.
He barricaded the gates with wood.
Easy and effective.
Plus: Extremely helpful in dry summers.
Despite the rewetting effort, the water level here varies a lot –
from 50 centimeters above ground
to 60 centimeters below ground during dry summers.
Researchers measured dozens of bogs
and their CO2 emissions.
When the water is at the same level as the surface,
you have the least amount of emissions –
here in the middle.
When the water level drops,
the CO2 emissions rise significantly.
But how do peatlands trap carbon in the first place?
"So we just took this out of the ground
and when you just grab this piece of earth and squeeze it –
you can see how much water is coming out of that.
That's bascially what makes peatlands so climate friendly…
the water.
Because below me are thousands of tonnes of dead plants.
But because peatlands are wet, they don't decompose.
The microorganisms who usually do that,
don't have enough oxygen to take care of that."
So the carbon remains in the soil.
"Now, when all this dries up, the plants suddenly
decompose super quickly and the oxygen
that's in the air takes up the carbon
that is stored in the soil – and you get CO2."
And the scale is mind-blowing.
Between 5% and 10% of all man made greenhouse gas emissions come from damaged peatlands.
Apart from Europe, a lot of them are released in Southeast Asia,
where a majority of peatlands and swamps
have been cleared to produce palm oil and pulpwood.
Once the water is gone, it takes 16 years for a drained peatland
to go from a carbon source back to a carbon sink.
This new approach of combining agriculture with peatland meadows is called paludiculture.
And this also has advantages in terms of productivity.
Sebastian Petri harvests around five tonnes per hectare.
It can't really be compared to conventional hay production: they just use different types
of grass and harvesting cycles can also differ.
"The cool thing when you combine agriculture with peatlands
is that you can choose highly productive crops
that are producing a lot of biomass.
Mainly below ground with their roots.
They form the basis for new peat that can start to build up.
And in paludiculture this might be happening
even faster than in natural wetlands."
Also hay isn't the only thing you can produce on peatlands.
Alternatives include common reed and bulrush.
"Which is also grown in these pots here
at the University of Greifswald where scientists try to
find out everything about growing stuff in wetlands."
And because dead roots are what it takes to build up peat, that's a major interest here.
Every week they measure the growth and lifespan
of the bulrush roots with this scanner.
But that's not the only thing they can monitor here.
This machine has x-ray vision and uses lasers
to measure every millimeter of plants that are growing here.
"We never had something like that in our garden, man!"
But wouldn't it be better, environmentally, if we’d give peatlands
completely back to nature?
So you don't need to go full-on nature to make use of peatlands' climate benefits.
A UK study explored exactly that and looked at
the climate effects of different water levels in peatlands.
Raising the water level in degraded peatlands
worldwide to 25 centimeters below ground
would already reduce their emissions by 65%.
That represents 1.3% of global CO2 emissions.
"Of course, the effect would be even greater if you restore
everything to its natural status and
leave it untouched. But that's taking away
the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and
someone has to pay for that.
It's just a lot of hoops to jump through
before we'd see any action.
And we need solutions like yesterday."
But there is one big uncertainty about all this re-wetting:
Will there be enough water?
As the planet gets hotter and hotter, the water depth
in rewetted peatlands also fluctuates greatly.
Meaning, the positive effects of re-wetting could wear off.
Sebastian Petri also owns 35 water buffalos.
They grow slowly, but every once in a while
he butchers them and sells their meat.
Different studies explored paludiculture's profitability
and established these profit margins per harvest:
With water buffalos, you're looking at
260 euros per hectare.
For wet meadows it's 450 euros,
with common reed it's up to 570 euros,
and with bulrush it's just 90 euros per hectare.
Compared to the revenues of intensive vegetable farming,
current costs of rewetting peatlands
and buying new machinery – most farmers will be better off
financially if they stick with intensive farming.
"A way to make paludiculture more profitable
could be that governments start paying for
the climate benefits that rewetted peatlands provide.
Or start charging those farmers who keep
their peatlands drained."
This could help get more farmers interested in the idea
of paludiculture and its environmental benefits.
"About 300,000 square kilometers of cropland –
that's the size of Italy – need rewetting globally.
And the techniques that we saw today
give us a great way of doing that.
Whether you bring the peatlands back to their natural status
or use paludiculture to farm them."
"If you did like the video and the machinery
as much as I did, please comment and share this video.
And also don't forget to subscribe to our channel,
we post new videos on the environment every Friday."