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

The UK’s leading dairy co-operative is putting the pedal to the metal with their sustainability efforts and transforming cow manure from their farms into vehicle-friendly fuel in a major new trial.

The initiative will see farmers 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 three-month test will involve two special tankers that have been adapted to run on biofuel transporting milk from the participating farms to the cooperative’s processing dairy in Aylesbury.  Together they are expected to cover around 90,000km and help remove

around 80 tonnes of CO2 from the air.  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 27,000 kg of biofuel to fuel the trial vehicles.

Aston spoke to farmer Ian Barker who is taking part in the trial to discuss how the trial works and also what it aims to do in the future.