What anaerobic digestion has done for our farm, our neighbours and our community
Fifteen years ago, Apsley Farms was a straightforward arable business: growing crops, selling them, and hoping the weather and the markets were kind.
Today, we run an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant that turns crops and organic material into clean energy, fertiliser, CO2, and dry ice. It is a much bigger, busier, more varied operation than it was, and it has changed things for us, for our neighbours, and for the wider area.
This is the first in a short series of blogs about what farm-based AD actually looks like in practice – not the theory, but the reality of running it day to day.
We are starting with the big picture: what has it actually done?
For the farm
In 2011, we took the decision to build an AD plant to turn arable crops into electricity by breaking down plant material harvested from our own farm.
By 2014, we realised the business had to grow or there would be no business. So, with help from Scotia Gas Networks, we used the pipeline running through our fields to turn the biogas being made into biomethane.
Today, the Apsley plant injects enough renewable natural gas in the national grid to supply 10,000 homes year round.
In 2016, we started capturing the CO2 released into the air and now supply food grade CO2 to the food industry, and compress the liquid CO2 into dry ice.
The farm is now carbon neutral, and our biomethane production provides sustainable fuel to help meet the UK’s energy needs and climate targets.
For our neighbours
The plant has brought local, practical benefits: more jobs, contractors and hauliers working nearby, fertiliser that doesn’t need to be manufactured and shipped in, and successful partnerships with local farms.
We pay farmers to grow crops for our plant, which we harvest using our own equipment, and store on farm in our ag bags until collection. This gives our partners no pressure for grain movement during harvest, no storage, haulage or drying costs, and increased combine capacity for other crops during harvest.
Keeping neighbours on side has taken real effort: clear communication, care with road use, and just being a decent employer and neighbour in a small rural community.
For the wider community
AD has turned what was a small, seasonal arable business into something offering year-round employment.
We now employ around 60 people, across roles that didn’t exist on this farm a decade ago: plant operation, logistics, engineering, and more.
That’s 60 livelihoods tied to a rural business that might otherwise have stayed small and seasonal.
We also now work with contract harvesting across around 50 farms, meaning the benefits reach well beyond our own boundaries.
How it works
Over the next few posts in this series, we will go into the detail: how break crops fit into a rotation without competing with food production, what digestate actually does for soil, how CO2 capture turns into food-grade CO2 and dry ice, and what it’s like building a team from scratch in a rural setting.
The short version is that, done well, AD doesn’t compete with farming; it strengthens it.