CSM EDITORIAL
Those companies selling solar panels to farmers to place in their fields have – like all good salespeople – addressed the likely objections:
They argue that solar panel structures preserve agricultural land, that planning permission for a solar farm is time-limited, and installations can be completely dismantled at the end of their operation. Solar does not take agricultural land, they say, it borrows it, and because agricultural land under a solar farm is in effect left fallow, soil health can recuperate. They go further. They argue that solar helps address climate change, which they deem the single biggest threat to UK food security, that solar cuts costs, which helps keep UK farmers in business. Meanwhile sheep can continue to graze on fields where solar energy development takes place.
But what if solar farms covered every other productive field in the UK? Where are the limits? Our food security would then be gravely threatened, surely?
No, says the Solar Trade Association which argues that:
“Solar farms themselves occupy a minuscule area, and even with five times as many solar farms deployed around the UK, they would still occupy less land than the amount currently occupied by golf courses.”
Greenpeace liked that reply:
So, what are solar farm negatives?
In a nutshell: national self-sufficiency in food (the percentage produced relative to the percentage consumed) has been allowed to fall from 74 per cent to 61 per cent in the UK since the mid-1980s. Food security for the UK is already heavily dependent on foreign produce. Solar farms are often erected on productive agricultural land. The suggestion that sheep can continue to graze on fields where solar energy development takes place is fanciful as the panels clearly reduce grass growth. They’re damn ugly – grotesque pimples on the face of some of the world’s most beautiful countryside. They tend to be based near to electricity sub-stations as that’s cheaper (some solar farms face a 20-year wait to connect to the Grid) so cluster in specific local areas thus diminishing crop returns and food production in those specific local areas. Also, solar farms have an image problem amongst rural communities – the country needs more energy from renewables but why should the countryside be landed with power generation for towns when renewables can be generated by offshore wind farms, for example, that are out of sight and actually work? Finally, as the solar panel companies admit themselves, the panels don’t last forever – the industry standard life span is about 25 to 30 years, and that means that each passing year, more panels will be pulled from service and tossed into landfill.
Glass and metal photovoltaic modules will soon start adding up to millions, and then tens of millions of metric tons of material globally. Worse, solar panels are complicated to recycle. They’re made of many materials, some hazardous, and assembled with adhesives and sealants that make breaking them apart challenging.
Given the arguments for and against, one can argue that solar farms have not yet threatened food security in the UK but this is a space that requires vigilance. And to be fair, groups like the NFU have been keeping a watchful eye, as have the Countryside Alliance, but the government could be clearer.
Britain’s fields do seem like an easy option and a great sacrifice. Have all other options been exploited? How about helping farmers with a drive to cover farm barns and cattle sheds with panels, thus lowering farm energy costs?
Right now, solar power developers arguing that solar farms complement rather than compete with agriculture are correct, but for how much longer?
Also, given the well-documented struggles that farmers are under (featured in our much-read editorial last week with now north of a quarter of a million reads), with many farms expected to shut down over coming years and the average age of a British farmer now 59 years of age, how much larger can the solar farm sector become before it’s a threat to UK food security?
Last year a British solar company AEE Renewables stated that, “35GW of solar farms generating 10% of the UK’s electricity demand [nearly nine times the amount the UK has installed now] could be built on less than 1% of permanent pasture land without displacing any grazing sheep.”
There is yet to be a serious impact on UK agricultural output but the industry needs to be most carefully watched over coming months and years. What is required is an acreage cap for the solar farm industry. How many acres of prime farmland can these ugly panels occupy after which they become more nuisance than blessing? And only government can put a number on that.
Dominic Wightman and James Bembridge are Editor and Deputy Editor respectively of Country Squire Magazine – a publication which will always have British farmers’ backs.