The country should be incandescent over eviction of Yorkshire farmers - James Mitchinson

When we met them in 2021, they were embarking upon a David v Goliath fight that has rinsed the living daylight from them, after 110 acres - 42 per cent of their holding - of the land their family has looked after for generations was taken from them and earmarked for a sprawling solar farm.

Goliath, then, has won.

In a letter to The Yorkshire Post, published this week, Peter Auty of Great Hatfield said this: “The Sturdys are a hard-working family, one of three generations that have farmed these acres for more than 50 years and it counts for nothing.

"They have been sacrificed at the altar of climate change, at the behest of greedy landlords who have taken acreage out of food production and sold it for a pound of flesh. Shylock would be proud of them.”

The anger in his words is palpable. He is not alone.

Part of the reason for such fury, though not all, is this: in 2023, whilst occupying the position of leader of HM Opposition, and before he became Prime Minister a year later, Sir Keir Starmer told an NFU conference this: “Tenant farmers need a fair deal. They need to know that their futures are secure.

"We cannot do that by taking advantage of tenant farmers. Farmers who produce good British food on carefully maintained, fertile land.

"How can they plan for the future if they do not know that the soil beneath their feet is secure?”

Fast-forwards to today, and whilst Sir Keir Starmer has been given his marching orders, so too have the Sturdys who have had their hearts broken by a unilateral planning decision that has put the race to net-zero energy provision ahead of British food security.

Landowners and energy fat cats, in cahoots with governments, have calculated that harvesting rays from the sun is more important than crops harvested from the soil that are then put to feeding the nation.

The Sturdys, then, have effectively been evicted from almost half of their holding.

This represents one of the most egregious errors of judgement - and justice - in the pursuit of net zero; it is the poster boy for clean energy wrongheadedness and should serve as a warning klaxon to us all.

It is, quite simply, appalling.

Today, The Yorkshire Post is calling on ministers to call in agricultural tenancy law, particularly in relation to compensating tenants when land is lost to whatever whimsical, non-agricultural zeitgeist happens to demand a land-sacrifice of tenant farmers in the future.

Commenting on this, Baroness Rock told the House of Lords in 2025: “The [Sturdys] case is made doubly worse by the fact that it was called in by the Government and the decision of the inspector was fully supported by the Planning Minister, despite the promise made to tenant farmers by the Prime Minister when, as Leader of the Opposition, he said that solar energy schemes must not be taken forward at the expense of tenant farmers and that tenant farmers needed to know that the soil beneath their feet was secure.

“Unfortunately, Rob and Emma are now feeling the emptiness of those words.”

Emptiness doesn’t come close.

Emma told us: “Standing here, watching Rob combine for the last time. It’s heart-breaking. This is who we are, it’s everything to us and yet this is the last time.”

What does it say about us as a nation that without so much as an eyelid being batted in the national press and therefore the nation’s conscience, tenant farmers are having their livelihoods ripped away like this?

Hundreds of acres, thousands, even, around the country, handed over to power barons who are carpeting the countryside with steel and glass in pursuit of cleaner, greener energy production in a country that is responsible for less than one per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. 0.8 per cent, actually.

A total of 52,000 acres of land is currently covered by ground-mounted solar panels in the UK. All told, solar accounts for about five per cent of our power mix.

Nuclear power in the UK accounts for more like 15 per cent. In France, where electricity is much cheaper than in the UK and more reliable, nuclear provision amounts to more like three quarters of the energy grid mix.

As a country, we should be incandescent about this. Fire and brimstone should be fuelling a collective rage.

Sacrificing good, fertile soil - and good families - that helps put food on tables and keep grocery prices down, for power-generating infrastructure that, frankly, currently requires too much space for too little return, is a bugger’s muddle that undermines the values of our nation whilst insulting the intelligence of its people.

You only need to look at the recent salmonella outbreak, the source of which is suspected to be imported eggs from abroad, to see how critically important this issue is to the food security and therefore national security of the UK.

I urge you to write to your MP, calling for an urgent review into the rights held by and protections offered in law to tenant farmers whose holdings are feeding the country.

Don’t think of it as lobbying on behalf of farmers, but lobbying on behalf of the future purses in your children’s grown-up pockets into which schemes like this are reaching forwards in time, by contributing to driving up food prices in this country.

Think of it as lobbying for their health, too. And, think of it, ironically, as lobbying for green energy in a climate-conscious Britain because we can do this without sacrificing critical food security assets.

That is a fool’s move that in-turn breeds resentment and ire in the minds of the right-thinking public. Prime Minister Andy Burnham must, as a priority, address the lack of security of tenure offered to tenant farmers.

The food versus energy market war has become skewed. Too much power and influence now sits with the energy market and not enough remains with the food producers.

A correction is needed, before it’s too late. Do not get me wrong; I am sympathetic to the cotillion dilemma in which policy-makers find themselves.

This is a complex, global challenge that requires innovative technological solutions as well as viscerally difficult decisions borne of ethics and conscience.

The planet is screaming for help, and we must play our part in taking care of it. But not at any cost.

I cannot accept that the square upon which we stand inflicts zugzwang upon us. We do not have to make things worse for ourselves and for future generations.

And if you were to ask: what is the one thing I can do, no matter how small, to help?

Buy British.

James Mitchinson, editor of The Yorkshire Post.