I’m a Romney Marsh Farmer — Solar Farms Could Help Keep Farms Like Mine Alive
shepwayvox
This is a Guest Post
There’s a romantic version of farming being peddled in the solar debate on Romney Marsh, and as someone who farms here, I barely recognise it. In that version, every acre is bursting with wheat, every harvest pays its way and farmers simply need protecting from wicked developers waving cheque books. I wish farming were that straightforward. It isn’t.
My livelihood depends on what comes out of this land. That means weather I can’t control, yields I can’t guarantee and bills that arrive long before I know what the harvest will bring. Fertiliser, diesel, machinery, seed, labour and repairs don’t wait for a good year.
And lately the weather has been giving us a hiding.
July 2026 was England’s driest July on record. Southern England received just 1.9mm of rain, 3% of its long-term average, while Kent was among 19 counties recording 1mm or less. On 10 August, Kent and East Sussex were formally moved into drought. Those figures aren’t an interesting weather story to me. They’re the conditions I’m expected to make a living from.
The economics are just as sobering. Defra forecasts average Farm Business Income on English cereal farms falling by two-thirds in 2025/26, from £49,700 to £17,000, the lowest level since the present series began in 2004/05. General cropping farms are forecast to see average income halve from £107,700 to £54,000. Fertiliser and soil improver prices rose 11% in 2025, with ammonium nitrate averaging £385 a tonne, up from £338 the year before.
So when Hands Off Our Marsh and councillors talk about protecting the “farming economy”, I’d like them to ask the people who have to make it pay.
A farm isn’t preserved because somebody stops a solar development. A farm survives because the figures add up. If part of my holding can provide dependable income for decades while I keep ownership, retain agricultural activity where practical and eventually get the land back, I’d be daft not to consider it.
That isn’t abandoning farming. It’s diversification. Farmers have always diversified because relying on one unpredictable income is risky. Solar is another option.
The Government’s Solar Roadmap gives a useful example. A 509-acre farm near Sheringham in Norfolk put about 20 acres of moderate-quality agricultural land into solar. Forty ewes and their lambs still graze there from April to October, while the farm receives income from lamb and solar rent. The Government says those two streams help underpin the business against fluctuating crop prices.
That’s the bit some campaigners seem remarkably reluctant to discuss. Rent is predictable. Harvests aren’t.
Hands Off Our Marsh has every right to object. I share some concerns. I want drainage protected, proper soil surveys, construction traffic controlled and batteries scrutinised. I don’t want the best land sacrificed where poorer land would do, or developers making promises they aren’t held to.
But Hands Off Our Marsh doesn’t speak for every farmer or resident. Its website warns that projects could put up to 8,000 acres under solar and frames the issue around prime farmland and food security. Those arguments deserve testing. They don’t prove every solar scheme is wrong.
We’ve already seen why the detail matters. At St Mary’s Road, opposite Marten Farm, Folkestone & Hythe District Council approved a roughly 40-hectare solar farm in January. Council mapping had indicated Grades 1 and 2, but a field-specific Agricultural Land Classification survey found the whole site to be Grade 3b, moderate-quality land. The limiting factors included heavy silty clay loam and wetness. Claims about “prime Marsh farmland” need testing against soil evidence.
The scheme also allows sheep grazing around and beneath the panels. The officer report says the land will remain in pastoral agricultural use and, after the 40-year operational period, the equipment must be removed and the site restored to agricultural use apart from retained landscaping. KCC Ecology, Kent Fire and Rescue, the Environment Agency and the Internal Drainage Board raised no objection in principle, subject to conditions where applicable. The committee approved it eight votes to four.
Cllr David Wimble has publicly backed Hands Off Our Marsh and opposed St Mary’s Road, raising agricultural-land and grid concerns. He’s entitled to challenge it. But councillors must deal with the evidence: the detailed survey said Grade 3b, relevant consultees raised no objection in principle and officers recommended approval. Opposition doesn’t turn Grade 3b into Grade 1.
South Brooks is vastly bigger and raises much harder questions. The scheme covers about 1,208 hectares and is proposed for 60 years. Of the 812 hectares surveyed so far, 84% has been classed as Best and Most Versatile land: 1% Grade 1, 51% Grade 2 and 32% Grade 3a. Another 15% is Grade 3b and 1% Grade 4. The council is right to demand the final classification, justification for using higher-quality land and proper assessment of farming and cumulative effects.
Being pro-solar doesn’t require me to switch my brain off. If a developer wants hundreds of hectares of Grade 2 land, it must explain why. If panels can go onto poorer land, they should. If drainage, soil, farm businesses or habitats can’t be safeguarded, the scheme should change. That’s planning: an evidence test, not a referendum on panels.
At Folkestone & Hythe’s Planning and Licensing Committee on Tuesday 21 July 2026, members were considering the council’s consultation response to South Brooks. They weren’t deciding whether the solar farm would go ahead; the Chair made that explicit. It’s a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project and any eventual Development Consent Order will be determined nationally after examination.
At 54 minutes and eight seconds, Cllr Goddard said he wasn’t against solar and could accept Parcel D. Then the speech changed gear. Referring to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, he said: “Take the panels with him, take them up north. The people of Marsh, the people of Marsh do not want this.”
Well, Councillor, I’m one of the people of the Marsh.
I farm here. I want the option of solar because I have to keep a farm alive through drought, volatile crop returns and unpredictable costs. Cllr Goddard doesn’t get to turn “the people of the Marsh” into one convenient voice because it plays well in the chamber. Nor does Hands Off Our Marsh.
He should stop playing the room and start talking to us farmers. He might learn something.
There’s an irony here. Andy Burnham became Prime Minister on 20 July, the day before that committee meeting. On 14 August his Government announced £65 million of extra drought support after the record-dry July. The Government said this was the third drought in five years and stressed that farmers shouldn’t be left carrying the risks of a changing climate alone. Cllr Goddard congratulated Burnham, then suggested sending the panels north. Perhaps he should also listen to what the new Prime Minister is saying about the pressures farmers face.
Then there’s the cry of “put it on roofs”.
Yes. Put solar on warehouses, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, houses and car parks. But roofs and fields aren’t an either-or choice. The Government’s Solar Roadmap says current-policy projections could see 60–65% of installed solar capacity by 2030 coming from large-scale projects. Solar currently uses around 0.1% of total UK land; the high end of the Government’s 2030 scenario would take that to about 0.4%. The same policy says poorer agricultural land should be preferred and Best and Most Versatile land must be justified.
The wildlife argument needs the same care. Solar can be badly designed and badly managed, but it isn’t automatically an ecological dead zone. Research involving the RSPB and University of Cambridge found nature-friendly solar farms in East Anglia supported nearly three times as many birds per hectare as surrounding arable land. At St Mary’s Road, the biodiversity metric predicts an 80.92% gain in habitat units, 387.87% in hedgerow units and 28.09% in watercourse units. Those gains now have to be delivered and monitored.
I don’t want Romney Marsh indiscriminately carpeted with panels or every scheme waved through. I want the right development on the right land, protected drainage and soil, enforceable restoration and developers made to prove their case.
But I also want councillors and campaigners to stop talking about farmers as though we’re scenery in somebody else’s countryside.
Romney Marsh is a working landscape. Working landscapes have to earn money. If putting solar on part of a farm provides stable income that allows the rest of that farm to keep producing food, employing people, maintaining ditches and staying viable, that matters too.
I don’t need Hands Off Our Marsh or a councillor deciding on my behalf that diversification is somehow a betrayal of farming.
I need the freedom to decide how I keep farming.
And when a councillor tells a room that “the people of Marsh” don’t want solar, he might remember that some of us are out here trying to make a living from the Marsh he’s talking about.
The views expressed in this guest post are those of the individual contributor and do not necessarily reflect those of the Shepway Vox Team.
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