NUCNet member Colin Tosh, Senior Agroforestry Researcher, Organic Research Centre reports on Groundswell’s “8 Minute Ideas on ‘Novel Use’ Crops” session.
What might British farmers grow in the future? That was the question behind Groundswell’s lively “8 Minute Ideas on ‘Novel Use’ Crops” session, chaired by rural commentator Rob Yorke. Combining elements of “Dragon’s Den” and “Mock the Week”, the event gave five speakers just eight minutes to make the case for an unusual crop before facing questions from the audience.
The pitches demonstrated the range of opportunities available to farmers looking for new markets and more resilient farming systems. Tom Amery, managing director of The Watercress Company, spoke about watercress and its dependence on clean, flowing water, particularly the chalk streams of southern England. Emma Loder-Symonds of Nonington Farms presented proso millet as a drought-tolerant spring break crop with the potential to become a profitable British-grown grain for human consumption. Jon Myhill of the Maize Growers Association considered how maize could be grown more successfully within regenerative systems, with greater attention to soil condition, establishment and nutrient-use efficiency. Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme, agronomic manager at Belgian company Agronuts, made the case for developing hazelnuts as a commercial orchard and agroforestry crop in the UK.
The pitch that captured the audience’s imagination, however, came from Ponda co-founders Julian Ellis-Brown and Finlay Duncan. Their crop was the humble bulrush, more properly known as *Typha*, which can be grown on wet or rewetted peatland. Ponda processes the plant’s soft, lightweight fibres into BioPuff, a natural insulating material designed as an alternative to goose down and petroleum-based synthetic fillings. The fibre can be used in premium puffer jackets and other insulated clothing, giving the audience a clear and memorable example of how an overlooked wetland plant could become a high-value commercial product.
When the audience voted, the bulrush enterprise won unanimously. Its success was perhaps unsurprising, because the proposal appeared to tick an exceptional number of environmental and commercial boxes at the same time. Bulrush can be grown through paludiculture—the productive use of wet land—on low-lying, marginal or degraded peat soils that may be poorly suited to conventional cropping. Keeping this land wet can slow the loss of peat and the release of stored carbon, while still allowing farmers to produce a harvestable crop and generate an income.
The environmental benefits extend well beyond peat protection. Wetland farming can help retain water in the landscape, reduce erosion and create valuable habitat for birds, insects and other wildlife. Bulrushes are also capable of absorbing nutrients from water, creating the possibility that they could form part of carefully designed treatment wetlands. Such systems might use treated wastewater or final effluent from sewage works, with the plants providing an additional stage of water purification while simultaneously producing useful fibre. This would, of course, require appropriate engineering, monitoring and environmental permissions, rather than simply applying untreated sewage to farmland.
What made the Ponda proposition particularly powerful was the way it connected these environmental functions with an attractive finished product. Restoring or rewetting land is often presented primarily as a conservation cost, but the production of BioPuff offers a potential commercial return. Farmers could be paid to grow a crop that protects peat, improves water management, supports biodiversity and supplies renewable insulation to the clothing industry.
Millet, maize, watercress and hazelnuts all offered credible opportunities for diversification, greater resilience and new markets. Bulrush won because it seemed capable of solving several problems at once. It could bring degraded land back into productive use, reduce environmental damage, help clean nutrient-rich water and create a valuable natural material for high-end puffer jackets. The jacket may have provided the most memorable image of the session, but the real strength of the pitch was the wider farming system behind it: a model in which commercial production and environmental recovery could reinforce one another.
