Farming Futures update: anaerobic digestors are go

Yesterday we held a great Farming Futures event in Dorset. Over 40 people came to Owen Yeatman's farm, near Blandford to hear about his venture into anaerobic digestion. (If you've ever wondered what the inside of an anaerobic digestor looks like, you can see it on the BBC Spotlight piece that went out yesterday evening.

The Lowbrook Farm digestor converts the slurry from the 400 head dairy herd and maize into biogas, producing electricity for over 400 houses. The digestion process also results in the nitrogen in the slurry being turned into a form which can be used more easily by growing crops, so the digestate is a more valuable fertiliser than the original slurry. A case study is available from the Farming Futures website.

Jonathan Scurlock, the NFU's Chief Policy Adviser on renewable energy and climate change, was one of the speakers at the event and discussed the role of anaerobic digestion in a low carbon future. He highlighted the different scales of digestor that need to be taken into account in policy making - to encourage a mixture: from small farm-scale digesters, perhaps providing biogas just to farm buildings and housing, right through to large scale commercial plants operated by waste management companie. We should be aware of the whole range of opportunities, and for example farms may be able to use the technology collaboratively where one farm may be better sited to take in waste from other farms and manage a grid connection.

Yesterday's event was organised with the NFU, one of the partners in the Farming Futres project. The project's approach of convening a number of partners - Forum for the Future, the NFU, CLA, AIC, and the AHRF (representing all of the levy boards) - with funding from Defra - is proving an effective way to produce clear and practical information for farmers and land managers on the wide-ranging issues related to climate change.