Peatlands are more than an interest for Jenna Smith, chief executive of Pouarua Farms. “After being here and seeing the challenges in front of us, it’s become a passion project. I’m a self-proclaimed ‘peat geek’,” she says with a laugh. Pouarua Farms is owned by five Hauraki Iwi, purchased as part of their Treaty settlement, and Jenna oversees a large and complex farming operation with a mix of dairy, horticulture, cropping and drystock on the Hauraki Plains.
Significant peatland areas make up the farming platform, and in some places, are now below sea level. For the Iwi, who regard this land as taonga, finding a commercially sustainable and environmentally responsible future for it is not merely an economic question, which led Jenna, a Nuffield Scholarship recipient in 2024, to focus on adaptive pathways for peatland farming. This took her to the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Borneo, Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Italy, Brazil and the United States.
“I found there wasn’t a cookie-cutter solution we could simply lift from overseas and apply in New Zealand,” says Jenna. “Our peatlands are different, and large-scale drainage for agriculture has only really occurred over the past century, whereas many European peatlands have been drained and intensively managed for several hundred years.”
That relative youth, she argues, provides reason for cautious optimism. “Many of our peatlands have not yet experienced the same extent of degradation seen overseas. In parts of Europe, decades, or even centuries, of drainage have been accompanied by significant nutrient accumulation, subsidence and ecological change, making restoration both costly and complex. While New Zealand certainly faces challenges, our peatlands may offer greater opportunities for rehabilitation and restoration if we act early enough.”
She says peatlands in their natural state are among the most effective carbon stores on earth, vast vaults of locked-up carbon accumulated over millennia. When drained, they begin emitting that carbon continuously as the peat mineralises and oxidises.
Jenna says peatlands make up around 8% of New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and in areas such as parts of the Hauraki Plains, drained peatlands are facing subsidence at around 2 centimetres per year, slowly sinking below sea level and introducing other challenges such as salinity intrusion into groundwater, infrastructure failure and compounding costs for landowners.
“Either way, there will be economic consequences for farmers. This is not a challenge that’s going away – it’s one the sector will need to actively engage with and help shape.”
Although peatlands account for just 1% of New Zealand’s soil types, Jenna sees in that small footprint a disproportionate opportunity. “Could peatlands be one of New Zealand’s biggest climate opportunities?” she asks. “They occupy a relatively small area of our landscape, but their emissions footprint is disproportionately large. If we can find practical ways to reduce those emissions, the gains could be significant.”
She says the key lies in raising the water table, not flooding paddocks but lifting it closer to the surface. Her current research focus, working with Waikato University, MPI and Manaaki Whenua, is to determine what that might look like. “The science is not yet advanced enough to tell us exactly what water table level will deliver the best balance between reducing emissions and maintaining productive land use, particularly under New Zealand conditions. That remains one of the key questions we need to answer.”
Her Nuffield Scholarship travels also opened her eyes to commercial possibilities she had not previously considered. These included blueberry and raspberry growing on rewetted land, growing dense materials for construction, bio-digestible crops for energy production, floating solar panels on rehabilitated peatland and the propagation of sphagnum moss as a substrate for seed production.
Jenna says that Fonterra and other processors are beginning to recognise the impact of peat soils within sustainability and assurance programmes, and international food companies are placing greater scrutiny on peatland conversion and drainage in their supply chains. Governments in Germany, Ireland and Denmark are providing financial incentives for farmers to rewet peatlands, recognising that peatland emissions present a significant barrier to meeting national climate targets.
She says that together, these signals suggest peatland management is shifting from a niche environmental issue to a mainstream commercial and policy consideration. “Either way, there will be economic consequences for farmers. Whether it’s higher drainage and infrastructure costs, increased regulatory requirements or changes in land-use expectations, the cost of managing peatlands is likely to rise. This is not a challenge that’s going away – it’s one the sector will need to actively engage with and help shape.”
© Waterford Press Ltd 2026 – Independent Print Media New Zealand
