DRAX has become the first electricity generator in the UK to create a farm dedicated to testing and developing energy crops for producing power.

The 70-acre Energy Smart Farm has been set up in partnership with Masstock Arable (UK) and Brown and Co.

The two companies already work with Drax on its Green Shoots programme, which contracts farmers to supply biomass.

Crops will be planted from autumn this year and spring next year, although an initial ten acres of miscanthus has already been planted.

The farm covers marginal land which had to be drained and prepared to be brought back into production.

Rob Wood, biomass buyer at Drax, said: “It is precisely this type of low-grade land that can be given over to new use.

“We aim to inform farmers about the opportunities and help them to see how energy crops or agricultural byproducts might fit into their business.”

The Energy Smart Farm will be managed by Masstock, leading agronomy and farm inputs specialist.

Findings from the trials will add to the research data on renewable energy crops.

David Wild, Masstock’s local agronomist and a member of its environmental group in the UK, will oversee the farm.

Brown and Co, agricultural business consultants, prepared the application for 50 per cent grant funding available for miscanthus planting.

It is also handling other financial support incentives for crops such as willow and poplar to be planted until 2013, and implementing sustainability measures.

Masstock will consider the types of wheat, barley, oats and triticale to be grown to test for longer length of straw left from harvesting.

Drax uses thousands of tonnes of straw processed at its pelleting plant in Goole, three miles from the power station.

Mr Wood said the farm will also be a test-bed for sorghum, an energy crop grown widely in the US. “The trial will examine what yield can be achieved and any pest problems.

It might be that the plant is not well suited to the land, but we’ll have to wait and see,” he said.

Drax Power Station is the largest, cleanest and most efficient coal-fired power station in the UK.

Its six generators can generate 4,000MW and it presently supplies seven per cent of the UK’s electricity needs.

Last year, it generated the highest renewable output from a single facility – co-firing 907,000 tonnes of biomass, up from 400,000 tonnes in 2010.