Contractor John Whyte was baling up rushes for a farmer this week in Co Clare.

The farmer in question, Tony O'Brien, sold them for €11/bale.

The bales will be used in the Biomass to Biochar project, which is spearheaded by project leader Bernard Carey.

Biochar is a carbon-based product, which will be created when rushes and other scrub material are fed into a specially-designed machine, using heat in a low-oxygen environment.

Biochar is worth €1,750/t on world markets and can be used as a fertiliser or feed.

The Biomass to Biochar project aims to develop a local bioeconomy that will help the environment and generate a further income stream for farmers, particularly those in the Sliabh Aughty region, east Clare, the Burren and Connemara.

Funding

It has received €1m in funding from the Department of Agriculture under the European Innovation Partnership fund.

The funding is being used to build a mobile pyrolisis unit (MPU), which is under construction and should be ready by autumn, according to Carey.

"In this part of the country, there is real potential to become carbon farmers, instead of trying to run hundreds of cows on the land," he told the Irish Farmers Journal.

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