Dr Alan Knight, chair of Defra’s Sustainable Growing Media Taskforce has released a report calling for a holistic approach to solving the challenges facing the horticulture industries’ reliance on unsustainable growing media. The government has been criticised in recent months for its failure to engage in finding alternatives to peat, which is a non-renewable resource and leads to massive carbon pollution and habitat destruction.

In May this year, the Association for Organics Recycling said the government has been working too slowly to find viable alternatives to peat and accused Westminster of inaction over current high levels of contamination in green waste, which is hampering efforts to create compost to meet industry standards and threatening the sustainability of the horticulture industry.

Today, Dr Knight outlined the work of his taskforce has carried out over the past 12 months, the challenges ahead and a draft roadmap showing how his proposals can be taken forward. The taskforce chair said the industry remains over-reliant on peat; he stated, “The more [the horticulture industry] argues the economic case for peat, the more it exposes the inherent risk in having an industry that is too reliant on peat to compete. It is in the economic interests of the industry to develop more choices and alternatives in the raw materials for growing media.”

He called for moves to reduce peat use to be implemented across the EU and further afield and highlighted the positive work that has been achieved by the taskforce thus far. Dr Knight also called on the government to step up efforts to tie peat reduction and research into sustainable growing media in with other green commitments, stating this could “result in significant win-wins.”

The industry has welcomed Dr Knight’s observations, which were delivered from a decidedly market-based standpoint. NFU horticulture adviser Dr Chris Hartfield commented, “While this report doesn’t represent Government policy, it is encouraging to see that it takes on board both the evidence and the commercial realities, and makes it clear that any changes in growing media use will need to be economically sustainable for growers’ businesses. This means the costs of change will need to be shared by the entire supply chain. The NFU believes that Government also has a role to play in supporting research and development to help the industry change its growing media use.”

The Sustainable Growing Media Task Force was established in June 2011 following the publication of the Natural Environment White Paper to explore how to overcome barriers to further reducing peat use in horticulture.

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