On-farm digesters of modest size, fed with manure slurry or waste from on-farm activities like cheese making are good for the environment, good for agriculture and able to provide small amounts of gas for heat or electricity. Sometimes a proportion of crop is used with the waste to provide the right mix of feedstock.

Larger digesters fed with food waste from the food industry and supermarkets or from urban recycling rounds are also useful green enterprises, but they don't have any particular need for a countryside location. CPRE Somerset has adopted a position statement which explains the issues surrounding large scale AD plants in the Somerset countryside and what we consider to be unacceptable, industrial scale development in an inappropriate rural location.