Urban sprawl, not solar, is destroying Indiana farmland | Letters

Indiana’s farmland loss is primarily related to residential needs, not commercial scale solar.

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I was happy to see Jacob Stewart’s column, “Solar belongs on rooftops, not Indiana farmland,” discuss the terrible policies set in place by the Indiana General Assembly toward rooftop solar. Rooftop solar development should be reliable, affordable, easily accessible and include transparency with the homeowner.

I was disappointed to see the column used to further the falsehood that solar farms are responsible for farmland loss. This falsehood persists because its anger is directionally correct. It is “city folk” causing the problem — not because they want solar away from them, but because we won’t build dense housing.

Firstly, Indiana did a study and found that farmland loss is primarily, and nearly completely, related to residential needs.

Secondly, the U.S. doesn’t need as much farmland as it has. We know this because, with subsidies and tax credits, farmers pay a negative tax. They receive more in state and federal funds than they pay in taxes. We are subsidizing farms that the market doesn’t need.

An easy way to see this is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has 100,000 employees for 2 million farmers. For comparison, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates all truck driving in the U.S., has 1,000 employees for 29 million truck drivers.

Thirdly, one thing the market does need is more housing units. It is so desperate for houses that it is willing to pay premium dollars for land. Such a premium that it outweighs the negative tax farmers get. They can pay this premium because the economic forces are so strong in the Indianapolis metro area that it’s worth paying more for housing due to the job opportunities.

Now, there is no reason why this housing has to take farmland. If we want to continue subsidizing farms and having more farmland than the market needs, we can do that, but this has nothing to do with solar farms and everything to do with the amount of zoning for single family homes in Marion County and the surrounding area.

If people are really worried about farmland, we ought to remove zoning regulation across the metro area and allow developers to build more duplexes and apartments. This will lead to less farmland-destroying white picket fence, suburban, single-family homes.

Greg Bright lives in Marion County, where he advocates for zoning deregulation.