1. Turning problems into possibilities

While industrial scale utilisation of reed is still very challenging, it is already currently entirely possible to utilise reed on a smaller scale by integrating it into local food systems. In local cycles, the potential of reed can be realised faster.

Our view of turning current obstacles into readily utilisable opportunities for reed can be summarised as follows:

– Harvesting and processing equipment is undeveloped, so harvesting large volumes of reed is slow and too expensive --> ways must be found to utilise smaller amounts of reed biomass.

– The logistics chain of the harvested reed and the related infrastructure is undeveloped, so transporting the reed biomass over long distances is difficult and too expensive --> ways must be found to utilise the reed biomass as close as possible to the harvesting site.

– Many possible applications for reed with a higher degree of processing on an industrial scale require a lot of development work and the creation of demand and markets --> it is necessary to find application areas where the demand already exists and for which solutions with a lower processing degree are suitable.