FARMERS URGED TO ‘PLEDGE A FIELD TO REAP A FINANCIAL WINDFALL’

Farmers who may have witnessed a fall in income in recent times, can significantly add to their incomes and they need do nothing more than offer a field or small piece of land to watch their finances grow.

The UK remains an attractive proposition for investment in the country’s small wind energy industry and there are farming communities across the country already bringing in extra income from this enterprising initiative as farmers look beyond their traditional arable, livestock and dairy revenue streams. 

Farmers need to maximise land use and with a 'per-turbine' windfall of anything between £1,500 and £2,000 per annum index linked for 20 years up for grabs, it makes good economic sense for farmers to lease a small piece of their land to small wind turbine investors, more so as the vagaries of the UK climate with occasional poor harvests, unusually harsh weather and dramatically rising energy costs can take their toll on a cash-strapped farming and rural economy. 

So, for any farmer, this is a win/win situation. In addition to the rental for doing nothing more than pledging use of a small portion of a field - and with no loss of use of the land at all, the farmer can make use of the green energy produced on-site by any wind turbine. 

This significantly drops their overall energy costs and safeguards them against future energy price. Moreover, the farmer can, if he wishes, be ‘locked in’ to a 20-year low cost green electricity deal. 

Gerry Lalonde, Chief Executive Officer, Orenda Energy Solutions, a UK-based turbine manufacturer for the small distributed wind industry commented;

“Despite this widespread belief that almost every farmer in the land has turned to renewable wind energy, the reality is that only a very small percentage of farms in the UK utilise wind energy and the cash revenue it generates.”

“Many believe the renewable market is being downplayed given Feed in Tariff (FiT) reductions. That might be the case for larger turbines, but the small wind energy market remains buoyant.”

 “The only tariff that makes economic sense for farmers is in the sub-50kW band – which is still attracting mainstream investment funds even with the drastic FiT reductions. Any farmer, wishing to make good money by simply letting a field for these small wind turbines, will reap large financial benefits. Therefore, what might appear to be land that is not ideal for a wide variety of farming uses could be perfect for wind power generation. “

More details are available at stand 1047 at Farming Business Innovation 2017 or by visiting www.orendaenergy.com