A lot of crop land is perfect for this sort of thing. They’re finding that low ground crops do really well near solar panels. Leaving money on the table by not double purposing the land.

https://www.wired.com/story/growing-crops-under-solar-panels-now-theres-a-bright-idea/

Also not sure why anyone would be resistant to turn empty unused pasture into solar farms. Other than astroturfing by fossil fuel companies.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

She has carved out a comfortable life in a sprawling mansion set on 10 acres (four hectares) of land, just outside the city of Lafayette, and is known locally for her donations to medical research and her small fleet of deluxe cars with personalized license plates.

The opponents of the solar project, a $1.5bn venture appropriately called Mammoth that is set to span an area almost as large as Manhattan, say they are defying an egregious assault on time-honored farming traditions and are standing up to a newcomer that threatens to warp their pastoral way of life with Chinese-made technology.

The ongoing fight is a sobering reminder of how Biden’s ambitions for a mass transition to renewables, aimed at averting the worst ravages of the climate crisis, will in significant part be decided by the vagaries and veto points of thousands of local officials, county boards and Connie Ehrlich-style opposition across the US.

America’s corn belt, which stretches from Indiana to Nebraska, produces a fifth of the world’s maize, a stunning feat of agricultural might that has deforested large areas, stripped away topsoil and made the land, by one measure, 48 times more toxic than it was 25 years ago.

The Mammoth project – which will generate 1.3 gigawatts of renewable energy, enough to power more than 200,000 households annually in coal-dependent Indiana – is split into three distinct areas encompassing dozens of landowners, which looks on a map like a collection of Jenga blocks scattered on to the landscape.

“As a farmer I take great pride in the beautiful land that God has blessed us with and believe it should stay to be used to grow crops.” Tiede warned that property values would decline if solar arrived – there is somewhat threadbare evidence of this – and raised the spectre of a disastrous fire.

The original article contains 3,017 words, the summary contains 305 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Stalbaum, the head of the board of zoning appeals, said while most people in the county are either supportive or apathetic about Mammoth, a faction of people are so outraged they have taken to following and videoing him and other members of the board, or idling in cars outside their homes.

Anonymous phone calls, meanwhile, were made to a school where Stalbaum was previously a teacher to cryptically warn that he was not suited to be around children, he said. On Facebook, supporters of the project have been called “roaches” and “traitors” and, in one instance, seemingly compared to Adolf Hitler. “I can only imagine how intimidating he is around children!!” one poster wrote about Stalbaum.

~~Nimby~~ NIMC (not in my county).