Yeah, it's not a significant amount of land. But it does seem like these companies prefer to take quality farmland instead of unused land. There's something similar happening near my town, where a company wants to put a big solar array on some prime farmland, and the locals are asking why that spot and not getting an answer. It might save a small amount on development, as farmland is fairly flat and has no trees to remove, but that's miniscule in the overall budget for these things, and rough ground would be much cheaper to buy. But the corporation behind it and the government entities involved are digging in their heels and insisting on using farmland, without any explanation why.
So it does seem like some of the people making these decisions just like the idea of taking farmland out of production for some reason. Maybe they just don't like farmers or modern farming methods. If that's their motive, they may not realize how tiny an effect they're having on the total, because most non-farmers don't really understand how much land is out there.
It's like the people who say Bill Gates is trying to control the food supply because he owns something like 270,000 acres of farmland. Even that just isn't that much, not enough for him to control anything larger than the horseradish market.
In my part of Ohio, everything big enough for a meaningful solar farm is "prime" farmland or coveted and necessary forest or wetlands -- unless it's already used for business, or housing, or infrastructure to support civilization.
Perhaps my perspective is simply very limited, but: In my estimation, there is no unused land to use.
Even the big pile of dirt I drive by twice a day: It does stuff. It gets bigger and smaller as some pay to get rid of extra dirt from their project, and others pay to buy some of that dirt for a different project. Someone somewhere manages that pile of dirt.
So it does seem like some of the people making these decisions just like the idea of taking farmland out of production for some reason. Maybe they just don't like farmers or modern farming methods. If that's their motive, they may not realize how tiny an effect they're having on the total, because most non-farmers don't really understand how much land is out there.
It's like the people who say Bill Gates is trying to control the food supply because he owns something like 270,000 acres of farmland. Even that just isn't that much, not enough for him to control anything larger than the horseradish market.