I WRITE in response to the article for a 143 acre solar array at North Tawton.   I am not against the considered and careful placing of renewables but not on prime productive high grade arable land.  We live in the centre of Devon.  The landscape has been  managed over centuries through farming for food production so that we live in a county of rolling hills, woodland, rushing rivers, hedgerows and we still fortunately have a diversity of flora and fauna.  I would call this an eco park.   Kinetica gave two presentations to the community in 2013 and 2014.  The most recent was poorly advertised with about one week's notice and held on a week day. Inconvenient for those working out of town to attend.  Coupled with this, statistics are notoriously unreliable and can be contrived to suggest anything.  Kinetica would describe me as in the minority of objectors to this development. The comment that only 25% of the 143 acre site would be covered by panels is also misleading.   The fixings will not take up much land and the panels do not lie flat on the ground. Unfortunately the land in the shade of the panels will be nutritionally starved.   Talk of biodiversity and recreational facilities for the locals is insulting and for Kinetica a sop to offsett the loss of land, the visual blight and wealth generation for their partners. Large scale solar arrays are not undertaken by altruistic organisations for the good of the country or our energy needs.  They are inefficient and unreliable.  This is a company backed by speculative investors who have selected high grade agricultural land rather than brownfield land. The site is conveniently located adjacent to a substation which makes their returns greater. The taxpayers ultimately fund these schemes under the guise of goverenment subsidies.  In addition we pay more for our energy with renewable green measures.   Those directly benefitting from such a development are farmers, investors, council via business rates and in this case Taw Valley Creamery who will seemingly receive lower priced energy.    The creamery could meet their renewable tickbox from anywhere in the country.  Furthermore, with a bit of creativity Taw Valley could easily incorporate solar panels onto its site.  In addition consider the other large industrial buildings in North Tawton which could be similarily clad. A development the size of Kinetica's could be sited anywhere in the country on brownfield land. As planning policy guidance states, no local authority has a renewable energy quota to meet. This development flies in the face of current and well documented government policy and legislation.   It even flies in the face of the Solar Trades Association own 10 commitments. Barbara Holroyd Resident of North Tawton REGARDING application no 01132/2014 for a solar park, North Tawton, to call this proposal an 'eco park' would, in my view, contravene the Trades Description Act. One hundred and forty acres of good food-producing land disappearing for 30 years, the importing of 30 years of food from other countries, lorry/ship movements, diesel consumption to make up the shortfall, would give the carbon footprint of this development a big minus, how eco friendly would that be? Kinetica propose to provide a community shelter 'a pathway with wildlife information boards, how kind, a wooden shed stuck on the edge of 150 acres glistening with solar panels is the more likely. They might, however, save money on the size of the information boards, with little, or no wildlife left to record. Local exhibitions have shown pictures of solar panels with sheep grazing under them. Kinetica admit that the grass quality under these panels would be very poor, suitable only for rough highland breeds of sheep. This development, if allowed, would bring the total acreage of Devonshire farmland lost to solar panels to nearly 4,000, creating a bigger shortage in our food production (currently only 60%). Electricity produced from the proposed farm could power up to 6,000 homes, we are told. In reality it will not power any, its only purpose would be to supply power to the creamery nearby. At the moment there is no 106 (community payback) agreement between Kinetica and North Tawton Town Council, therefore no benefit to North Tawton or its inhabitants. This development must not be allowed, not least because it goes against government guidelines re: industrialising of prime agricultural land, as I've stated before, when we are queueing for the last loaf left on the shelf — you cannot eat a solar panel! Steve Whiteley North Tawton