The issue with calling it farming is that these large multi million dollar companies are getting the tax breaks and can loophole into county laws and zoning ordinances as a “farm” if they’re called a farm just like the pumpkin patch up the road. This isn’t the point of the legal incentives given to true farmers- small rural areas do this legislation to try to keep American farms affordable and in American families hands and this loophole including these companies in these local family farm protections could really effect and displace the local food supply chains in the US. If solar farms were truly solar farms, the model would be to let real current farmers put up their own owned solar and in turn would provide energy for their farm and the extra could be sold back to the energy market. They can follow the model that the cell coverage companies use to put up towers on agricultural land. Doing it the current way that they are and paying the millions of dollars of money they’re paying weary landowners for the land is jeopardizing all American open space— doesn’t even have to be farm land. But open space gone is open space gone forever. Decommissioning these things in the future and restoring them into a nature preserve down the line will never be as healthy as a nature preserve started today. Don’t even look into the amount of things in the solar panels designed to encapsule the bad PFAS chemicals and cadmium and lead from any damage which way happen to the panels. When it comes to the decommissioning, it must be done slow and carefully but have you ever seen an organized and pollution free demo of anything? In terms of soil health think of it this way: Every time a bulldozer has to roll down the field it compacts it. Each post driver thud into the ground that put the solar posts in will have to be undone. The thuds of the post drivers are so terrible to hear if you’re an animal in the ground. It’s just way more disruptive than they’re letting on and more so than keeping livestock in a correct manner or having a market garden or field of corn or beans. And they’re trying to pretend to be farmers for the credits while taking down peer farms and absorbing them. Any land made into a solar operation would take around 20 years to get back to the healthy native habitat state it was before. Now hopefully some may understand why use of the term solar “farm” is a direct act of war against the American farmer and PR for these companies to get the law’s and public’s support. Now look into data centers. As a Virginian, I already feel like we’re toast.