What about golf courses eating into valuable farmland? - Yorkshire Post Letters

A number of your correspondents have written in expressing concern about the area of farm land that will be needed for solar farms and the potential impact on food security in the UK.

The briefing pack from the House of Commons library suggests that to reach the national net zero target solar farms will take up 70 000 hectares of land, about 0.3 per cent of the national land area, by 2035, and between 0.4 and 0.6 per cent of land by 2050.

What I am surprised at is that these same correspondents are not equally concerned by another consumer of farm land – golf courses. Currently these take up 118, 000 hectares of land, well above the amount anticipated for solar farms in 2035, and close to the maximum expected by 2050. Golf courses take up more than 2.5 per cent of the land in Surrey, the West Midlands and Merseyside.

It is also reasonable to point out, as the same briefing document notes, that sheep may safely graze under solar panels, while hand harvested crops such as lettuce and berries can also be grown under them (if we had the labour to harvest them, but that is another issue).

I have not noticed much growing of lettuce and berries (except brambles or bilberries in the rough) on golf courses, and cannot imagine flocks of sheep being very welcome.

So could the opponents of solar farms because of the loss of farm land please extend their campaigning to proposed new golf courses.