Harvest Technology

With DKK 23 million behind it, six companies, two universities, the Danish Nature Agency and Food & Bio Cluster Denmark will contribute to the extraction and wetting of low-lying soil can become a real instrument for agriculture in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The project will also contribute to promoting rare and endangered nature in the river valleys and provide the farmer with new sustainable business areas where biomass can be included in new, attractive, circular products.

In Denmark there are approx. 171,000 hectares of carbon-rich lowland soils with ordinary agricultural operations, which today emit large amounts of CO2 due to drainage and cultivation. By stopping agricultural operations and making the soil wet again, CO2 emissions can be significantly reduced, which is the background for the government's plans to set aside large areas.

Today, various crops are grown on some of the lowland soils. Cultivation causes the peat to collapse and emit greenhouse gases. Other significant areas with lowland  soils have in recent years been phased out of operation and instead overgrown with reeds, bulrush, stinging nettles and other tall herbs, a condition which is  poor nature wise and where greenhouse gases continue to be released.

To reduce CO2 emissions from such soils, the water level must be raised, and water saturate the peat. To increase the nature content, the biomass must, if possible, be removed from the areas so that former meadows can be recreated.

However, the existing harvesters cannot be used as they are too heavy and destroy the soil. Development of new machines "which can walk on the water" is thus necessary - both where you want to improve natural values ​​and where you want to create a branch business - and preferably where both can happen at the same time.

Read more about harvest on Nature Areas.

A key goal for the new project has been developed by a completely new harvesting machine with a professional capacity that can perform nature conservation and harvest gently on water-saturated soft soil. A development that connects this project with the ongoing Nature project “LIFE IP Natureman.

"For several years, we have worked to develop technology for harvesting biomass on low-lying soils containing nature. We have the value chain under control, organizing harvests and optimizing the logistics, but struggles with a technology that has not had the potential capacity, and which has had several challenges in relation to the use on water-saturated areas. We therefore look forward to the project solving these shortcomings" says Bendt Egede Andersen, forester at the Danish Nature Agency.

The project has a budget of DKK 23 million with a project grant of DKK 14 million from the Green Development and Demonstration Program (GUDP). The project is scheduled for four years and begins on January 1, 2021.

7 Danish companies, 2 universities, the Danish Nature Agency and Food & Bio Cluster Denmark are participating in the project. Each of them contributes to the value chain from grass in the meadow to developing finished products:

• Harvest technology with Curru-Tek ApS as producer,
• Sustainable building boards with Kronospan ApS and Jena Trading ApS as producers,
• Protein from meadow grass with BiomassProtein ApS as producer,
• The logistics chain from field to customer is developed by AST A / S and Eiler Chr. Knudsen A/S
• Conterra ApS develops a tool that can divide lowland soils into different classes.