Why have Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak got it in for solar panels on farmland?

Is this just more soundbite politics from the two Conservative leadership contestants, asks Chris Stevenson

The Green Alliance says land used for solar farms could also be used for crops (PA)

It is one topic that the two Conservative leadership contestants appear to agree on – they would rather not have solar panels on UK farmland.

“On my watch, we will not lose swathes of our best farmland to solar farms. Instead, we should be making sure that solar panels are installed on commercial buildings, on sheds and on properties,” Rishi Sunak, who is heading for defeat in the contest, has said. It follows similar comments from Truss: “Our fields should be filled with our fantastic produce – whether it’s the great livestock, the great arable farms". She has also referred to solar panels as “paraphernalia”.

As has been reported by my colleague Harry Cockburn, highlighting research from the Green Alliance think tank, 77 times more arable land is used for biofuel production – which makes up about 10 per cent of every litre of petrol pumped into UK vehicles – than solar energy. And solar farms take up just 1,400 hectares compared to the 108,000 used for biofuel production. The Green Alliance has called biofuel for cars a “zombie policy”.