Here at Palus Demos, we’re all about empowering farmers and industry with the transition to paludiculure.
That’s why we work closely with our two sister projects, PaluWise and Paludi4All. PaluWise is using four large-scale demonstration sites to build the evidence base for advanced, production-focused solutions for the sustainable use of rewetted degraded peatlands, while Paludi4All is addressing socio-economic and environmental aspects, providing innovation tools and fostering stakeholder engagement.
Throughout the duration of this project, all of our research and findings will be open source – meaning that we want to show farmers and industry everything we learn so that they can put it into practice themselves.
In January 2026, the three paludiculture partners met for a field demonstration of a typha harvest.
This began on January 14th with a field demonstration where cattails were harvested, and visitors could tour the drying facilities of Struunhoeve Agri, a Palus Demos partner.
The following day, participants attended was a workshop on the various applications of typha. Here, Palus Demos partner Peter van der Maas, Professor of Sustainable Water Systems at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences, spoke about his insights on earning potential and business opportunities in Dutch paludiculture.
According to van der Mass, the current market for fibre crops in bio-based construction does not yet provide a sufficiently stable and reliable basis for Dutch farmers – especially dairy farmers – to start cultivating wet crops. This means that a substantial share of future revenues will need to come from payments for societal or ecosystem services.
The program was co-designed by Aldert van Weeren, and several Palus Demos partners were present. The workshop confirmed the importance of a good exchange of knowledge and insights between the three Horizon projects, all focused on scaling up wetland crops for peat conservation.