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Every year, Brandenburg's moors emit more climate-damaging gases than all of the traffic. The reason: A large part of the moorland has been drained for pastures and fields and is constantly releasing CO2 emissions. Now, enormous areas are to be rewetted in the next few years and agriculture is facing a huge transformation. How can it succeed? Problems at the Cottbus Baltic Sea: • How Germany's largest artificial ... More documentaries in the playlist: • All documentaries & reports Even more documentaries in the ARD media library: https://1.ard.de/dokus Brandenburg is one of the states in Germany with the most moors. But peat extraction, drainage and agricultural use have largely resulted in the loss of the important biotopes. Today, only 10 percent of Brandenburg's moors are in a near-natural state. The drained moors release huge amounts of CO2. If Germany wants to achieve its climate goals, huge areas will have to be rewetted in the next few years. Agriculture is therefore facing a huge upheaval. Reporters Stefanie Otto and Alexander Goligowski accompanied affected farmers and residents in the country. If the plans of climate activists are followed, the way the land is managed will have to change fundamentally. Farmers, on the other hand, fear for their livelihoods and are raising the alarm. Farmer Heino Tietje moved from Lower Saxony to the Uckermark at the end of the 1990s and set up a dairy farm there. He fears that if the water level in his meadows rises, they will no longer be able to be driven on and mown as before. The grass from wet meadows would also be of poorer quality as feed. And just recently, farmer Tietje invested in new milking robots. Doris Triebsch from Netzen is also worried that her pastures will lose value. She and her neighbors fear that the town will regularly have to deal with wet cellars in the future if the water is no longer pumped out of the moors. Moor conservationist Christina Grätz is implementing pilot projects for the rewetting of agricultural moors on behalf of the state of Brandenburg. Together with other experts, she advises affected owners on how moorland and climate protection can be compatible with further use of the land. A project in Schleswig-Holstein shows how this can be achieved. There, farmer Dag Frerichs manages Germany's largest solar park in a rewetted moor. He and his team embarked on this adventure in 2021. To mow the wet meadows, Frerichs and Co. use particularly light remote-controlled machines that do not compact the soil. A technique that they copied from alpine pasture management. In the future, the harvested biomass will also be used as a raw material. Film by Stefanie Otto and Alexander Goligowski First broadcast November 21, 2023/rbb Image: rbb #documentary #reportage #agriculture #farmer #farmers #cows #climateprotection #climatecatastrophe #brandenburg