The other calls it birds on the roof and totally unrealistic to put mussels to pick up nitrogen from Danish fjords to the extent planned.
In the proposal, the parties propose that 100,000 hectares of lowland soil and marginal areas be set aside by 2027.
Jørgen E. Olesen, who is head of department at the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University, has previously pointed out that it will be a difficult exercise by 2030.
– It is obvious to tackle the lowland soils. But it is also a road that is both slow and full of barriers of various kinds. So I can then doubt that one can reach 100,000 hectares by 2030, he says.
He points to several different problems that arise when moving the calculation from the paper to reality.
Parts of these hectares have been split up into several different landowners, and experience shows that it is slow to get these acquired.
In addition, there is lowland soil that has become rich in phosphorus. Flooding them will release that phosphorus to the detriment of the aquatic environment, and countermeasures must therefore be considered if one is to go that route, he believes.
But first and foremost, there is just great uncertainty about what effect one gets from extracting a large number of low-lying soils.
– It is a bit difficult with the agricultural negotiations, where you want to say in advance that you have to achieve this with these initiatives. We can not. We do not know exactly how much these areas will emit, he says.
Another researcher who wonders about some of the bourgeois parties’ proposals is Stiig Markager. He is a professor of biogeochemistry and marine ecology at Aarhus University.
In addition to the scale of set-aside of low-lying soils, which in his opinion is too small, the plot’s nitrogen calculation proposes more draconian changes than he thinks the plan expresses.
Roughly speaking, the proposal will put an end to new regulation with locally adapted requirements for farmers and what they must do for the aquatic environment in their immediate area.
On the other hand, the proposal indicates that environmental mussels must be released into Danish fjords as compensation.
– Environmental mussels are about growing mussels, which then filter algae, and when you then take the mussels out of the water, you also remove nitrogen and phosphorus, says Stiig Markager.
– If you have to do this on a scale so that it had an effect of this, then we are talking 10-20-30 percent of the area of the fjords that must be laid out for this.
That is, with buoys and plastic pipes kilometer after kilometer. It will be difficult to sail on the fjord. It will no longer be a blue sea surface. In other words, large parts of our fjords must be included as agricultural area.
Question: If you have to describe the means stated in the plan, is this in your opinion a realistic and passable path?
– This is completely unrealistic and birds on the roof when we talk environmental mussels.
– It has some negative environmental consequences for the fjord. There is a sludge from the bottom below. That is, the fjord bottom simply turns to mud. The mussel farms will be in the way of each other.
– And then it will have a negative effect of the recreational use of the fjord and the amenity value of looking out over the fjord.
Source: The Nordic Page