The Myth That Farmers Are Cashing In From Solar

One of the most persistent arguments used to justify industrial-scale solar on agricultural land is that farmers are benefiting from it. We are told that solar offers farmers a secure income, protects struggling businesses and represents nothing more controversial than sensible farm diversification. It is an attractive argument, but it rests on a basic distortion: the person who owns the land is not necessarily the person who farms it.

That distinction is not marginal. Defra’s June 2025 agricultural land-use statistics recorded approximately 6.1 million hectares of agricultural land owned by its occupiers, but another 2.9 million hectares rented in for a year or more. More than 1.27 million hectares of that rented land was held under Farm Business Tenancies and more than 1.1 million hectares under Full Agricultural Tenancies. At farm level, Defra reported that only 54% of English farms were entirely owner-occupied in 2024. Another 31% operated under mixed tenure and 14% were wholly tenanted.

So when somebody says “the farmer has chosen solar”, the first question should be obvious: which farmer?

A landowner may own the fields, but somebody else may have spent decades farming them. The tenant may have invested in machinery, livestock, buildings, employees and local supply relationships on the assumption that the productive land base will remain available. If the owner subsequently decides to make that land available for a solar development, it is the owner who stands to benefit from the development value. The agricultural occupier can face an entirely different outcome.

We now have remarkably clear evidence of what that can look like.

The agricultural assessment for the proposed Steeple Renewables Project records seven principal farming occupations within the development area and says those occupations are mostly rented. Several would experience very substantial reductions in their operating land. Two cases are particularly important because the assessment records that their tenancies are to be surrendered at the 2026 harvest.

At Ferry Farm/Thornhill, the documented holding is approximately 197 hectares. Around 140 hectares are identified as project land take — approximately 71% of the holding. The assessment records 135 hectares of Agricultural Holdings Act land together with Thornhill and states that the tenancy is being surrendered at harvest 2026.

Then there is West End Farm. Its documented holding is approximately 297 hectares, with around 176 hectares affected — approximately 59%. The assessment records that the AHA tenanted unit would be reduced to 121 hectares and describes what remains as only a part-time farm. That tenancy too is stated to be surrendered at the 2026 harvest.

Think about what those figures actually mean. We are not discussing somebody voluntarily putting five or ten per cent of their own farm into solar while continuing to operate much as before. One established farming occupation is associated with a 71% reduction in securely rented land. Another loses 59% of its tenanted unit and is left with a holding the applicant itself describes as capable of supporting only a part-time farm.

And then comes perhaps the most extraordinary part of the assessment.

Because the tenancies are being surrendered, the assessed future impact becomes smaller.

For Ferry Farm, the documents acknowledge that losing 71% of the securely rented land would significantly affect day-to-day operations. Yet because the tenancy is then being surrendered, the subsequent impact is treated as low. West End produces a similar result: a 59% reduction leaves what is described as a part-time farm, but the significance is reduced in part because the tenancy is disappearing.

That exposes a serious flaw in the way we talk about solar and farming. If the tenant disappears, the agricultural damage has not disappeared with them.

The fields have not magically returned to the farm business. The acreage has not been restored. The productive capacity has not been recovered. What has changed is that the tenant who would have suffered the effect is no longer there to be counted as the same future receptor.

This is precisely why the comforting language about “farm diversification” deserves far more scrutiny.

There is an important qualification, because the evidence should not be exaggerated. The available Steeple documents record the tenancy surrenders, the scale of land take and the consequences for the remaining holdings. They do not, on the evidence we currently have, entitle us to claim that either tenant was forcibly evicted or to speculate about private settlement terms. A negotiated surrender is not the same thing as compulsory eviction.

But we do not need to exaggerate the evidence. The documented facts are powerful enough.

Two established tenanted agricultural occupations face enormous reductions in their productive land base. One is documented at 71%; the other at 59%. Both tenancies are recorded as being surrendered at the 2026 harvest. In one case the remaining unit is described by the applicant itself as only a part-time farm.

That is hardly convincing evidence of solar strengthening British agriculture.

It also illustrates why the national debate has become so confused. A landowner can rationally conclude that solar offers a better return from the land. There is nothing mysterious about that. Long-term development income can be more attractive than conventional agricultural rent. But that is a return to land ownership. It should not automatically be presented to the public as a return to farming.

The distinction becomes even more important on mixed-tenure farms. A farmer might own the farmhouse, buildings and perhaps several hundred acres, but rent another substantial block from an estate or neighbouring landowner. That rented acreage may be essential to spreading the fixed cost of machinery, maintaining crop rotations, producing winter forage, supporting livestock numbers or employing staff.

Lose that block and the effect is not simply proportional to the number of hectares removed. Agriculture does not work like that.

A combine does not become 40% cheaper because a farmer loses 40% of their arable land. A grain store does not shrink when the acreage falls. Tractor finance, insurance, buildings, labour and specialist equipment remain. Beyond a certain point, the farm hits what our wider evidence describes as a viability cliff: there is no longer enough productive land to justify the capital and infrastructure on which the existing business was built.

We have already seen this principle elsewhere. At Hoefields Farm, planning records concluded that the reduction in the tenant holding would leave insufficient land to justify retaining the existing arable equipment, forcing a fundamental change in the nature of the farming business. At Horsford, an Inspector accepted that a solar proposal would cause lost revenue, higher costs and potentially fewer employees even though the residual business was expected to remain technically viable.

That is the reality hidden by the simplistic claim that farmers can “just diversify”.

Some can. An owner-occupier who voluntarily leases part of their own holding for solar and receives the income may genuinely regard it as sensible diversification. Nobody needs to pretend those cases do not exist.

But that is not the whole story.

For a tenant, “diversification” can mean watching the landowner diversify while the farmer loses the land on which the agricultural business depends. For a mixed-tenure farmer, it can mean retaining the farmhouse and some owned fields while losing enough rented acreage to destroy the scale of the operation. For another farmer, it can mean buildings and machinery remaining in place after much of the productive land that justified them has gone.

And now we have documented examples in which two tenancies are due to disappear at this very harvest while their land sits inside one of Britain’s major proposed solar developments.

That should change the political conversation.

Every major solar application involving agricultural land should be required to disclose not merely who owns the land, but who actually farms it, under what tenure, what percentage of the whole farm business is affected, what happens to the tenant, what replacement land exists and who receives the development income.

Agricultural Land Classification alone cannot answer those questions. Measuring hectares cannot tell us whether the remaining farm can support its machinery, employees, livestock, buildings or contracts. Saying sheep might eventually graze beneath panels does not prove that the existing agricultural business has survived. A different grazing contractor operating beneath solar panels is not continuity of the farm that was there before.

This is where the mythology surrounding solar finally collides with the evidence.

The solar industry wants the public to hear the word farmer because it suggests diversification, rural prosperity and voluntary choice.

But sometimes the person making the choice is the landowner.

Sometimes the person collecting the development income is the landowner.

And sometimes the person disappearing at the end of the harvest is the tenant farmer.

Before politicians repeat the claim that solar farms are putting money into farmers’ pockets, they should look at Ferry Farm and West End and answer a much more uncomfortable question:

If solar is supposedly saving British farming, why are established farming tenancies disappearing as the developments move in?

That is the debate we should be having.

Not whether landowners are capable of making money from solar. We already know they can.

The question is what happens to the farmers who do not own the land.

Shane Oxer.  Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy