February 21, 2012
England
England
Devon farms ‘should not be windfarms’
BBC News, www.bbc.co.uk 21 February 2012
BBC News, www.bbc.co.uk 21 February 2012
Farmers in Devon should stay with farming and leave energy-production to someone else, a leading rural campaign group has said.
About 150 wind turbines are currently proposed for the county, including many single turbines on farmland.
Landowners get paid by turbine operators if they provide sites.
Penny Mills, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) in Torridge, north Devon said farms should be just used for agriculture.
She said: “They should be diversifying into agricultural matters. Their job is to provide food not to generate power.
“This countryside is here now. We can’t ruin it.”
Dairy farmer Richard Berry, based near Ilfracombe, has applied to be allowed a turbine.
He said: “It makes me wonder that if the CPRE was around when the national grid was being constructed, whether they’d still have us all using candles.”
Rob Paul – from One Wind Renewables, a company that puts up single wind turbines – said where electricity was coming from was “going to have to change”.
He said: “Ultimately, people want the lights to come on when they come home from work, and there is going to have to be a cost to pay for that.”
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/02/21/devon-farms-should-not-be-windfarms/