A Conservative MP has criticised the coalition Government for allowing solar farms to bring about the "industrialisation" of the countryside.
Totnes MP Sarah Wollaston hit out after the Government revealed its ambitions for a ten-fold expansion of the energy form over the next seven years.
She took to the social networking website Twitter to say: "Covering prime farmland with sterile PV arrays won't power the nation just starve it, impoverish the fuel poor & desecrate rural Britain."
And in a clear attack on the direction of Conservative energy policies she went on: "The Conservative Party used to understand the importance of our rural heritage & food security."
Dr Wollaston claimed there had been "little debate" over the future implications of cultivated land lost to renewable energy development.
Her warning came after the energy and climate change minister, Greg Barker, disclosed his intentions for up to 20GW of energy to be produced by solar panels by 2020. Rural campaigners in the Westcountry say the proposals are "sheer insanity".
At the same time, planning Minister Nick Boles – another Conservative – sparked rural controversy by saying developers should be allowed to build on green fields that were "boring".
He told a fellow Tory in a letter that people had to be realistic about putting more housing on "environmentally uninteresting green spaces".
But Shaun Spiers, chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), accused the Government of being "in denial" about the scale of countryside building.
"What he classes as uninteresting fields might be essential for growing food or somewhere that people absolutely love walking their dog on or just looking at," said Mr Spiers.
Cornish Lib Dem MP Stephen Gilbert urged planning authorities to prioritise "local need over developers' greed".
He said there was still a "significant demand" for housing among local people, after figures showed the homes shortfall in the South West was the biggest in the country in 2011.
Opposition continues to grow against the Government's solar energy drive as ministers face warnings the plans could even overload the country's electricity system. Duchy residents may mount a High Court challenge in order to block plans for 15,720 panels stretching over 36 acres of farmland in Egloshayle near Wadebridge. The project, proposed by US firm SunPower Corporation was given final approved by Cornwall council earlier this year.
The landowner, Andrew Hawkey, said the project would "be of benefit... for the whole of Cornwall", but local opponent Antonia Willis described the process as "undemocratic".
Bob Barfoot, chairman of the North Devon CPRE branch, said: "Building on agricultural land is sheer insanity. Where do they think all our food will come from?"
Dr Wollaston said farmland should not be developed and panels instead put on roof tops and brownfield sites. She urged people to visit a solar farm to discover their "hideous reality".
