Working with Peat
Can farmers make a living from restoring peatlands instead of draining them?
Sebastian Petri’s farm is unusual, although at first glance it may not look it. Located to the northwest of Berlin, visitors are greeted by an earthy scent and sticky mud underfoot. Then, an intriguing green wetland harvesting machine grabs your attention. Petri goes against the grain – he is one of the few who try to make a living from healthy peatlands.
“We’re continuing to adapt to the land here rather than forcing the land to adapt to us,” Petri tells a group of visitors touring his farm in Brandenburg. Together with his wife, he manages 250 hectares of peatland, much of which has been rewetted to support the growth of reed canary grass and sedges.
What is peatland?
Peat is dark brown, soil-like organic material that forms in peatlands or bogs through the buildup of partially decomposed plants like moss and sedges. For many industries, peatlands are considered marginal lands – meaning that it is economically unviable for conventional farming or development because costs outweigh potential returns.
Farmers have traditionally drained peatland areas to make way for conventional agriculture. In the Brandenburg area, around 186,000 hectares of peatland have been converted to agricultural use.
Massive carbon stores
Peatlands cover just 3% of the world’s land surface but store twice as much as the world’s forests combined. When peatlands dry out, oxygen reaches the carbon stored in the soil, causing it to break down and release CO₂ into the atmosphere. The consequences are far from insignificant. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), drained peatlands account for an estimated 5% of global human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
In Germany’s case, according to a 2024 NPR report, drained peatlands account for approximately 7% of Germany’s total greenhouse gas emissions, rising to 40% in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. An average acre of drained peatland releases around 12 tonnes of CO₂ annually, highlighting the disastrous impacts of keeping these carbon rich soils dry.
At first, rewetting drained land while continuing to farm seems like an ideal solution: protect the climate while allowing farmers to maintain their livelihoods. However, waterlogged soil makes conventional farming machinery difficult to use, limits which crops can grow, and creates new challenges in making agriculture profitable.
Getting wet might not be that bad
What if farmers can keep the water and still farm and make their living out of that land?
This is precisely what Sebastian Petri has been trying to do. Rather than draining his peatlands to accommodate conventional agriculture, he raises the water levels and harvests plants that naturally thrive in wet conditions – like reed canary grass. The approach is known as paludiculture, or wetland farming.
Petri’s family began farming in the area in 1994. Four years later, they started changing the drainage system to retain more water. During winter, some of his fields can be covered by as much as 40–50 centimeters of water (12-16 inches). In summer, he generally aims to keep the water level close to the soil surface.
The plants growing here are not deliberately planted crops like one would encounter in a potato farm, for example. Reed canary grass and sedges already occur naturally in the landscape. Petri encourages their growth by carefully managing when and how often the fields are harvested.
But harvesting waterlogged peatlands presents another challenge – conventional agricultural machinery is often too heavy for the soft ground. That is where the green tracked vehicle parked behind Petri comes in. Originally a snow groomer, the machine has been modified for wetland harvesting. Its wide tracks spread its weight across the ground, allowing it to operate where ordinary tractors would sink.
According to Petri, the machine puts less pressure on the ground than a person walking on it, although we decided not to test that claim by standing underneath it.
Who buys grass?
Grass is a potential raw material for everything from animal feed to construction materials. The real question for Petri is whether his wetland grass can earn him enough to make a living.
The farm produces around 400-500 tonnes of biomass annually, according to Petri. Most of it is currently sold as hay, particularly for horses and beef cattle. However, the grass has relatively low energy and protein content, making it less suitable for dairy cows.
Petri hopes that new industrial applications could increase the value of his harvest. Researchers and companies involved in MarginUp! are exploring whether biomass from marginal lands could be used in products such as construction materials and alternatives to conventional plastics to develop more solutions and create a new market.
In its German pilot, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB) are working with farmers and industrial partners to turn wetland plants into commercially useful products.
The process begins with harvested grass, which is dried and prepared for processing. At ATB, a twin-screw extruder breaks down the plant material into fibres that can be separated by size. Longer fibres can be used for paper and packaging, while shorter fibres can be processed into pellets for landscaping and green roofs. The remaining material may also be used for fuel pellets.
Industrial partner FMS Futtermittel GmbH is helping turn this research into marketable products. According to ATB researcher Shaikh Shahsharif Mohammadshafi, the project has already supplied plant-growing substrate pellets to a customer in Mallorca, demonstrating that potential buyers exist beyond the traditional hay market.
However, finding a buyer is only the beginning. Scaling up production requires a reliable supply of biomass, efficient processing and products that can compete with conventional alternatives on price. And nature rarely delivers identical raw materials: rainfall, groundwater levels and seasonal conditions all affect the quantity and quality of the harvest.
What about the wildlife?
The benefits of rewetting extend beyond carbon emissions. Wetland farming can also create habitats for birds, insects, and other wildlife. But the ecological picture is more complicated than simply bringing water back.
“Many species will profit from rewetting. But of course, a land use change will never be beneficial for all species,” explains Johanna Reger, a researcher at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), who studies biodiversity within MarginUp!.
Some birds thrive in wetter habitats, while others depend on the open grasslands created by traditional farming. This means that how and when farmers harvest their crops matter just as much as restoring the water itself.
The economic reality
For Petri, the biggest obstacle is not whether wetland farming is technically possible. He has already demonstrated that it can be done. The question is whether it can provide a sufficient income.
He told REVOLE that hay was selling for approximately €120–€140 per tonne, indicating the low prices of biomass as the main limitation. He estimated that he would need around €250–€300 per tonne to make the operation economically viable.
“Without funding, it’s very hard,” he told visitors, pointing to the high cost of specialised machinery and the low prices paid for hay.
He also believes that farmers could eventually earn additional income from the climate benefits of keeping peatlands wet, potentially through carbon credits. But measuring and certifying those benefits remains difficult and expensive.
Despite these challenges, Petri has noticed a change in attitudes among neighbouring farmers.
“In the past, they were laughing about me. But now they see it works,” he said.
As Brandenburg experiences increasingly dry conditions, retaining water has become more attractive. Some neighbouring farmers have begun working with him, even if they are not raising water levels as high as he does.
