Alternative heating provides alternative income for farmers

Ray Ryan Agri-business Correspondent, visits a biomass centre in the Austrian town of Natternbach which provides heating to 120 homes, using wood chippings from local farmers.

IT was five degrees below freezing point in the snow covered high lands above the town of Natternbach in Upper Austria.

But all the talk inside a co-op building was about heat, and how a group of local farmers had come together to create a biomass centre for the local rural community, using forestry thinnings and wood chippings from two sawmills.