Gwyn Jones, Vice President of the National Farmers Union (NFU), has been announced as the latest member of The Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association (ADBA) board.

The NFU and ADBA both strongly support the principle of farmers adopting anaerobic digestion (AD) to use slurries, wastes and crops to generate renewable energy and biofertiliser. This offers a valuable option for farm diversification, as well as cutting the carbon footprint of food production.

Gwyn Jones was born into a farming family in North Wales and trained as an engineer before returning to agriculture in Wales. He then ran the beef and sheep units at Moulton College of Agriculture, before arriving at Crouchlands Farm in West Sussex as farm manager 31 years ago.

He is currently a dairy farmer, farming in partnership in West Sussex milking 300 cows on heavy weald clay, and has diversified into green energy with a one megawatt anaerobic digester. A Nuffield Scholar and Fellow of the RASE, Mr Jones was also the NFU National Dairy Board chairman for six years until becoming Vice President.

Gwyn Jones said:

"As a practical commercial farmer, I hope that my experience in the industry at various levels, together with the steep learning curve of building and running one of the first on-farm AD plants in the country, will enable me to bring a combination of practicality and farm business to the ADBA Board.

"I do feel that in this exciting new area of opportunity for farmers, we need to work together in bringing government focus to the right areas, and urgently tackling the areas where more needs to be done - such as Health and Safety."

ADBA Chairman Lord Redesdale welcomed Mr Jones' appointment, saying,

"I am very pleased that Gwyn has accepted the invitation to join the ADBA board. I hope this will mean that ADBA and the NFU will be able to work closely together to help the AD industry.

"His wide knowledge and experience of farming will be a huge asset in ADBA’s support across all sectors of the industry, and work to address remaining barriers to plant development.

"He also has a practical understanding of the challenges and benefits of anaerobic digestion from his involvement in establishing and running the digester at Crouchlands Farm."