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Why thousands of farmers risk losing their land to Ed Miliband’s solar revolution

Telegraph
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Ed Miliband approved the 2,500-acre solar farm being developed by Sunnica on the Cambridgeshire -Suffolk border and the 3,000-acre Cottam solar farm in Lincolnshire .

The economics is simple. Farmers typically pay a top-rate annual rent of 500 per acre for good land growing lucrative crops such as potatoes.

Solar panels can generate rents of 1,000 to 1,200 a year every year for up to four decades , with rents linked to inflation.

Miliband ’s plans include a tripling of solar capacity within five years .

This means installing about 350,000 acres of panels an area bigger than Berkshire .

In the last seven days alone , plans were announced for a 5,000-acre solar farm to be built between Long Stratton and Diss in Norfolk .

Many fear that speaking out against solar developments will prompt their landlords to cut short their leases.

One farmer's family has farmed 150 acres in mid-Cornwall with cattle, sheep and arable crops for three generations.

“We have no idea what to do or where to go. And no one seems to care.”.