Letter of the week

We need our farmland

Dear Editor,

I read Michael Morris’ letter with interest and concern (Island Soapbox, September 2). Having worked in food and public health for many years, I am dismayed at the amount of agricultural land that is being taken out of production for rewilding, but also by solar farms that present an equivalent threat to our national food security.

Our new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has stated that “I am somebody who wants to see farmers producing food, not filling in forms, not doing red tape, not filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms. What we want is crops, and we want livestock”. Low Carbon is currently proposing a 100-acre ‘farm’ on land in the West Wight east of Wilmingham Lane. This will not only take a large amount of land out of food production, but also create a huge visual blight on our beautiful Island, visible from the Downs and the surrounding AONB land. As others argue, solar ‘farms’ need to be built on industrial roofs, as at the Bentley factory in Crewe (pictured), not on greenfield land. We need to leave the farmland for farming.

A. Draper, Thorley