• January 7, 2025

Paludiculture pilot project starts up

Paludiculture, or so-called 'wet farming' is a form of agriculture where alternative crops are grown on wet soils. Paludiculture could bridge the gap between wet nature and agriculture. It is the ideal transition between wet nature cores and dry intensive farmland and gives win-wins for both agriculture and nature. Yet very little is known about this in Belgium and there are no real-life examples of such cultivation. 

Until now! Because within the LIFE Multi Peat project, in collaboration with a farmer, we constructed a first pilot project of paludiculture. 

Paludiwhat?

Paludiculture or wet farming is an example of sustainable agriculture. Here, alternative crops are grown on land that is too wet for conventional agriculture. These crops can be used for various things. For instance, Reed, Cattail, Peat Moss, Willows, water mint and many other crops can be grown on wet soils. The harvest can be used for various purposes such as stable litter (Reed, Cattail, Willow, ...), animal food (Cattail, Willow, ...), insulation material (Cattail, Reed, Willow, ...), medicinal products (Reed, Cattail, ...), potting soil (Peat Moss), tea (Water mint) and many others.

Paludiculture in Belgium

Paludiculture was not yet known in Belgium. In other countries like the Netherlands, Germany, UK, … however, paludiculture is already being done and a lot of research is also happening on this form of CO2-neutral agriculture. Paludiculture has a lot of future potential as a sustainable form of agriculture. For now, the market for these crops is still small, but once Paludiculture becomes more widespread, it will become much larger.

With LIFE Multi Peat, Paludiculture with willows is now being tested for the first time in Belgium. More specifically, willows are grown here in buffer strips. The willows were planted at the Strackxhoeve in Laakdal at the end of June. Willow cuttings of both 20cm long and 50cm long were planted. More then 10 000 cuttings were needed for half a hectare. Such a willow buffer strip is 13 metres wide, ideal as a buffer between wet nature and agriculture. Now that the willows planted and the buffer strip has been fenced off (to protect it from deer foraging), the willows can grow. The first year is crucial here and, given the very wet year (the soil is even wetter than ever), planting was a lot more difficult. So let’s wait and see how the willows will react. 

Characteristics of willows

For paludiculture, very specific willow cultivars were selected that have as many characteristics as possible that are most beneficial in terms of yield and quality as well as for nature. Most importantly, the willows are triploid. That is, they are not fertile, so the seed they produce cannot germinate. This ensures that these willows do not sprout everywhere in nearby wetlands. Nevertheless, the willows will still flower. Willows are one of the first plants to flower in spring. This makes them very important for many pollinators such as Solitary bees and Hoverflies. Furthermore, willows have water-purifying properties, nitrogen fixating properties and help absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

On top of that, the willows are selected for their very good fibre quality and very strong growth capacity. The willows will be harvested annually and grow 4 metres per year. The harvest can then be used, for example, to make sustainable insulation material.

In April 2025 the first harvest will be ready, until then everything will still be monitored closely, some obstacles will have to be overcome and some practicalities refined. But once the crop is a few years old, it is much less sensitive to changes or climate extremes and the work here would be limited to harvesting.

Next steps

As this is the first time paludiculture has been done in Belgium, there are still many hurdles to overcome and many things we will learn from. With this paludiculture pilot site, we want to make wet farming known to farmers and thus strive for a more sustainable, carbon-neutral agriculture. This pilot project is therefore crucial to demonstrate the concept, overcome initial hurdles and help set up a system around paludiculture. We hope this practical example will lead to adapted policy instruments that will facilitate paludiculture and fuel the marketing market to start using these sustainable, local crops for their products.