Circular Farm to turn crops into clean fuel
A major new £2.4m farming project aiming to turn crops into both food and low-carbon fuel has launched in Lincolnshire, in what researchers say could offer a blueprint for the future of English agriculture.
The three-year initiative, known as RePeat, brings together the University of Lincoln, organic producer Pollybell Farm and national supplier of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Flogas to test a circular farm model that integrates food production, renewable fuel generation and environmental land management within a single system.
Delivered through the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs’ Farming Innovation Programme in partnership with Innovate UK, the project will establish a large-scale demonstrator across Pollybell’s 5,000-acre estate spanning Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire.
The model aims to address a central challenge facing UK agriculture: how to maintain food production while reducing emissions and adapting to climate pressures and volatile markets.
At its core is the use of farm-grown biomass to produce renewable dimethyl ether (rDME), a low-carbon alternative to LPG that could be used in existing heating systems. Around 1.5 to 2 million UK homes remain off the gas grid, with few affordable options currently available to decarbonise heat.
Researchers say the system will also capture and reuse heat and carbon dioxide generated during fuel production to support controlled environment agriculture, enabling year-round food production while reducing waste.
Dr Amir Badiee, principal investigator at the university said the project was designed to move beyond theory and demonstrate what integrated, low-carbon farming could look like in practice: “RePeat is about bringing together technologies that already exist and proving they can work as a connected system on a commercial farm. The challenge now is not just innovation, but integration and generating the evidence needed to scale.”
The university will lead on system design, monitoring and validation to ensure the model produces robust, transferable data for farmers, industry and policymakers.