A new kind of sewage plant

What if you could get paid to take the piss out of your local water company? Now, I’m not talking about venting any frustrations about hosepipe bans here, but about making money from sewage. That’s exactly what farmer and Rural Climate Change Forum chair John Gilliland is doing on his 500 acre farm near Londonderry, Northern Ireland, where he grows 380 acres of coppice willow.

In 1994 he took a leap of faith in the emerging biomass industry and turned his arable farm into a willow plantation. For John it was important that the farm worked in harmony with the environment rather than in conflict with it. This meant restoring the vitality of his soils, reducing carbon emissions but also increasing his business profitability.

 “Initially we looked at our total energy consumption and started where it was simple, by replacing all the fossil fuel boilers with wood and straw boilers. We then looked at our total acreage and saw that there were areas which were less productive. So we started there and planted new woodland to increase our carbon sink and to provide a long term sustainable and secure wood fuel supply.”

Now John has the majority of his productive land in willow because it’s his prime crop and as with any crop you want it on the best land to provide the best yield. But why willow? John says:

• It is one of the fastest growing woody fuels in Northern Europe 
• It’s an indigenous species and well suited to our environmental conditions
• It is grown with few inputs
• It is easily established from un-rooted cuttings
• It re-sprouts vigorously after each harvest
• It now offers large potential for increased yields through genetic improvement 
• It is planted as poly-clonal mixture (7 different willow species) – which through smart use of genetics reduces  the impact of pests and disease and increases yields
• It has an energy balance in the region of 20:1 (e.g. the energy obtained can be 20 times as much as the energy used to grow the crop)
• It can be used as a natural filter during "bio- remediation" of waste water sludge’s, tertiary water or contaminated land 
• It acts as riparian buffer zone, which enables compliance with the Water Framework Directive, provides on-farm energy, carbon storage and a natural biosecurity barrier against livestock disease

To help restore the vitality of his soils and ensure a high yielding crop with few inputs, John uses human waste to feed his crop. For a small fee John takes the sludge (at 25% dry matter) away from local sewage treatment works and injects it under the soil surface. This process mitigates odours and nutrient run-off, restores organic matter, sequesters carbon and reduces nitrous oxide emissions – a lot of very helpful stuff in other words! And he’s not alone, more and more farmers are looking to use sewage sludge. Northumbria Water now collects 192,000 tonnes of sludge every year and 96% of it is being turned into fertiliser and sold on.

As well as his own farm John has planted 1,500 hectares of willows throughout Ireland, Scotland and recently New York State! At the same time he’s expanding the market place for willow through the installation of over 100 wood fired boilers throughout the UK and Ireland. It comes as no surprise that he knows many farmers now earning more money from willow than conventional agriculture.

At present, less than 1% of heat in Ireland is generated from renewable technologies. John believes that the smart use of willows and sludge on land on appropriate land would mean that this figure could be increased tenfold without affecting food productivity.

Find out more or get in touch with John at www.ruralgeneration.com

• To see a video of John talking about his farm follow either of the links below. You need to watch from minute 18: http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0723/nationwide.html or http://www.rte.ie/player/#v=1077332
• Here about the rise in farmer demand for sewage via the BBC website.