For­get horsepower, Bri­tain’s farm­ers are turn­ing to cow power in a bid to be more sustainable

The UK’s lead­ing dairy cooper­at­ive is get­ting in gear with its sus­tain­ab­il­ity efforts and trans­form­ing cow manure from its farms into vehicle-friendly fuel in a major new tri­al. Arla’s ini­ti­at­ive will mean that for the first time, farm­ers will send their cows’ poo to a nearby anaer­obic diges­tion plant where it will be broken down into dif­fer­ent com­pon­ents, includ­ing clean bio-meth­ane, and con­ver­ted into usable fuel. The tri­al makes Arla the first UK busi­ness to use waste from its own farms to gen­er­ate power for its fleet. The pro­cess will also cre­ate nutri­ent rich, nat­ur­al fer­til­iser which Arla farm­ers can put back on to farms, mak­ing it an entirely closed loop, some­thing that hasn’t been done before. The three-month test will involve two spe­cial Arla tankers that have been adap­ted to run on bio­fuel trans­port­ing milk between dairy pro­cessing sites. Togeth­er they are expec­ted to cov­er around 90,000km and help reduce Arla’s car­bon impact by 80 tonnes – the equi­val­ent to 23 car jour­neys around the world. Prov­ing that muck is just as import­ant as milk, Arla will use manure from 500 cows – that’s around 190 tonnes of slurry each week – to cre­ate a stag­ger­ing 27,000kg of bio­fuel to power the tri­al vehicles. To mark the launch of the ini­ti­at­ive, the farm­er-owned cooper­at­ive has launched the UK’s first cow-powered fuel sta­tion on one of the farms tak­ing part in Winslow, Bucks. Ian Bark­er, an Arla Farm­er involved in the tri­al said: ​“Many of us recog­nise how valu­able a cow’s milk is, but many aren’t aware that manure is just as import­ant. Pro­cessing cow manure in this man­ner provides us with a lim­it­less source of energy, plus the digest­ate, or sol­id mat­ter, left over after the pro­cess makes an even rich­er fer­til­iser for my fields, so it’s a win-win.” Gra­ham Wilkin­son, Agri­cul­ture Dir­ect­or at Arla said: ​“Using manure from our farms is help­ing us reduce our waste and rely less on air-pol­lut­ing fossil fuels so it’s a no brain­er for us. With the help of our farm­ers and part­ners, we have a fully closed loop which at scale, could be revolu­tion­ary in help­ing fuel a green­er future.” Arla is using the tri­al to assess oppor­tun­it­ies for scal­ing poo-powered trans­port oppor­tun­it­ies across its value chain. If it proves a suc­cess, it will lay clear found­a­tions for how the dairy industry can join forces with Gov­ern­ment and oth­er part­ners to enable new fuel solu­tions that reduce envir­on­ment­al impact. Source: Arla, News, 02.10.2020