Newcastle University’s Cockle Park Farm, near Morpeth, has become the first farm in the Northumberland region to install an anaerobic digestion facility. The move, made as part of a drive by the university to explore ways in which agriculture can become more sustainable, will see pigs’ waste generating energy to heat their living quarters.

Dung from the farm’s 120 pigs will be digested in the £1.2 million AD plant by bacteria which produces methane gas, which is used to power a turbine and generate electricity. The plant was officially opened yesterday.

Dr Paul Bilsborrow, of Newcastle University’s School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development and who led the project, said its principal aim was to work with North East farmers, land managers and other related businesses to find new ways of producing renewable energy from waste.

Dr Bilsborrow and his colleagues hope that the Cockle Park AD plant will provide a useful demonstration of how such a site works, to roll out the model. They also want to see it developed to take slurry from other kinds of waste, from farm animals, vegetables and general food waste.

Dr Bilsborrow said he hoped the project, part of the university’s Living Lab project, would further research into sustainability. He concluded, “By working together with the agricultural industry we hope to develop new ways of making anaerobic digestion a viable process for uptake by farms across the UK.”