The managing director of a famed Gloucestershire agricultural specialist is recommending the sector adopt a circular economy model in order for it to strengthen its sustainability principles.

William Gilder, who first established The William Gilder Group as an agricultural contractor in the 1980s, is in the process of completing the purchase of a new area of farmland. He is urging the sector to reconsider what it views as ‘waste’ and encourages wider use of organic fertilisers such as digestate.

He comments: “When I look back to when I first began my career, the world was a very different place. There was certainly less talk of ‘sustainability’ in the headlines and in top-tier business conversations. As time has changed, agriculture has needed to evolve its practices to keep in touch with consumer requirements and behaviours. Many of the components for natural fertiliser – biosolids, organic waste, and manure etc – are already accessible in the daily operation of a farm. This can then be used as a more effective fertiliser for soil and has the added benefit of being ‘cleaner’ for the environment.

“In my eyes, both as a farmer and as the MD of a specialist waste transport and treatment service provider, there is a mismatch between the expectations from national policymakers and legislation constraints. I am personally fully behind the need to improve the health of our soil by using organic fertilisers, and ensuring that we do not farm more land than we need to, but as a sector we cannot do that alone. Fair pay and improved access to monetary support to facilitate environmentally conscious measures and innovations are the first two hurdles to overcome before anything else. From there, we have every chance of making agriculture efficient and therefore, use less power and expensive fuel, without the waste.”

ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems and ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems accredited William Gilder Group operates a fully licensed liquid waste treatment and disposal centre in Toddington, on the Worcestershire / Gloucestershire border, which has storage for 8,700m³ and is permitted to treat up to 124,000m³ of liquid waste per annum.

More recently, the company installed a state-of-the-art biomass boiler incinerator to generate clean heat energy across its head office site.

Additional information is available at: http://www.williamgilder.co.uk/.