Are the Growing Media Association working against Government peat reduction targets?

It has been 12 long years since the Government set the UK growing media industry a target of becoming 90 per cent peat-free.

Much progress has, without a doubt, been made, but on the eve of that 2010 deadline, some news stories are almost trumpeting the fact that the target is actually going to be missed. Earth-friendly gardening writer John Walker wonders whether the job of phasing out peat is really in the right hands.

I’m struggling to comprehend much about what, in at times mystifying language, is being said about peat, and about the mechanisms that are in place to reduce its use in gardening and horticulture. We’re rapidly moving into a world that’s starting to think and act green from top to toe. What we need is more straight talk, less obfuscation, and the putting to bed of the tired old arguments for continuing with peat use that no longer have any currency in an increasingly eco-savvy world.

Horticulture Week (HW) reported last week that future peat reduction targets are likely to be ‘split’ between gardeners and growers, with gardeners facing the toughest restrictions on what peat products they can buy. The rationale for this is still to emerge, but I’m struggling to fathom why splitting the targets is likely to go any way to achieving the reduction target - unless it’s just a way of juggling the figures to make failure to meet the 2010 deadline seem less deplorable.

Following a recent meeting between DEFRA minister Huw Irranca-Davies, the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA), and Growing Media Association (GMA) chairman Martin Breddy, the language is yet again flavoured with the usual vagaries. The press release following the meeting might well have been written amid the dense smoke from a fire of peat turves.

When Breddy says “We were delighted by the positive and constructive nature of the meeting which paves the way for a closer working relationship between industry and Government on tackling peat reduction over a sensible timescale”, does he actually mean: Phew, we’ve bought us some more time. No one seems too bothered that we’re going to miss a deadline that we’ve had over a decade to meet, and it’ll probably be ages until they get around to dreaming up another.

And when he says “This dialogue has been greatly helped by the integration of the GMA within the HTA, which has ensured the peat issue is addressed within the wider context of UK horticulture. We now need to keep focused and ensure that the agreed collaboration with Government leads to the right results for the industry”, is he really saying: It’ll be a lot better if we keep this peat reduction hot potato in-house so we can keep flogging peat for as long as possible and keep the shareholders happy.

Just how many decades is it going to take? Let’s not forget that peat is a fossil fuel and that its extraction and use is contributing directly to the liberation of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas driving climate change - as well as to the destruction of natural habitats.

The HTA’s Tim Briercliffe is keen to play the environmental, albeit greenwashed, card, but for rather a different reason. Quoted in HW last week (13 November), he says “We want to help people produce crops. If the consumer is not informed of the differences [between peat and peat-free] it might put people off grow-your-own and new gardening and reverse the good things that have happened to get people gardening and the environmental benefits that brings”.

Does he really think gardeners will choose to grow in peat compost, when they become aware of what environmental damage its extraction is doing, when a range of 100 per cent peat-free and high-performing composts already exist? Do gardeners need to patronised quite so much? Perhaps he means to say: We need to keep gardeners hooked on peat for as long as possible because that’s where the money is and it’s our job to look after our members’ interests. We can use a perceived ‘threat’ to grow-your-own as a way of maintaining the status quo.

Briercliffe also said, according to HW, the following at a meeting last week (it needs no translation): “We accept the need for change but don’t accept an unreasonable timescale. We need to do things over a sensible period that that won’t damage the industry.” Perhaps he could tell us what ‘sensible periods’ are measured in and when protecting the biosphere might trump protecting big peat business?

And while these are just the latest machinations from those pulling the strings in the peat debate, it’s an interview with the GMA’s Martin Breddy, published in HW on 10 July 2009 (read it here) that is perhaps most revealing as to why progress on phasing out peat is progressing at the pace of a snail.

Reading the interview had me doing a triple take and left me wondering whether I was reading Breddy’s comments right. I wrote a letter to the editor of HW, hoping to tease out more of what Breddy had said in his interview, and whether what he actually said is what he actually meant. HW chose not to publish the letter, but here is the essence of the questions I was seeking answers to...

In response to the Government’s deadline of achieving a 90 per cent peat-free growing media industry by 2010, Breddy said in the interview that the GMA had been “working hard as an association to manage progress against that aspiration” Did he really mean to say that? In other words, working to preserve the status quo of the peat industry, giving biodiversity a reluctant nod, and fudging the role of peat extraction in driving climate change.

His comment is at odds with the the FAQ on the GMA web site ‘What are the Government peat reduction targets and will they be met?’. The answer: ‘This is a challenging target that is less likely to be achieved at the current rate of change however GMA members are working towards it.’

It’s a no-brainer. Surely any target is less likely to be achieved if you’re actively working against it?

Breddy also says that “The Growing Media Initiative" (GMI) is one important vehicle to ensure responsible progress against that [the 2010] target”. Can there be ‘responsible progress’ against something ultimately intended to protect biodiversity and keep stores of fossil carbon intact?

Have all GMI members, including the RHS, National Trust, and RSPB, as well as peat-free growing media pioneers Melcourt and Vital Earth, signed up to work ‘responsibly’ against the 2010 target? Perhaps they would care to tell us?

Vested interests have, aided by some vocal gardening commentators, long sought to control both the debate around, and the future development of growing media. It seems, from reading Martin Breddy’s comments, that the pro-peat lobby are still firmly in control of keeping progress to a snail’s pace. Certain gardening commentator’s ably assist the process by firmly embedding in the gardening psyche that peat-free is crap while perpetuating the myth that there is ‘nothing like’ peat for container growing, and that we can go on consuming it with no detriment to the natural world.

Surely it’s time to hand over responsibility for developing truly sustainable, low-carbon compost to a transparent, independent body that might actually work hard for progress toward, rather than against targets that ultimately protect the world around us?

We shouldn’t forget that Martin Breddy, as well as being the current chairman of the GMA, is also general manager of the UK arm of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, a multinational that describes itself as ‘... instrumental in growing the $8 billion global consumer lawn and garden market and enhancing our leadership position.’ Scotts also sell a wide range of synthetic garden chemicals.

I can’t help thinking that having the boss of one of the UK’s two biggest producers of peat composts running the association set up to work towards peat reduction targets is a bit like letting the slugs guard the lettuces.

Text Copyright John Walker. Peat bog image Copyright Dylan Moore.