Business & Rural
28 February, 2026
Renewable energy factories ‘undermine farmer sweat’
“Projects such as VNI West are cited by Professor Mountain as ‘a massive overbuild and Victoria’s monumental mistake’.
THE region is home to intergenerational farming families who have invested decades improving soil health and productivity”, Ben Duxson told a standing-room only crowd at Sunday’s anti-renewable zone rally in Marnoo.
“Converting farmland into industrial wind and solar factories is seen as undermining the blood, sweat and tears of grandparents and great grandparents and threatening the viability of family farming,” he said.
“Infrastructure such as overhead powerlines, turbines, and panels will disrupt livestock movement, crop rotations, fencing, water access, and limit emerging technologies like aerial robotics and virtual fencing. Land values are lost and rules and regulation by government and offshore corporate ownership of projects problematic.
Mr Duxson said biosecurity and fire risks were another major problem with the proposed zones.
“The Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission identified overhead powerlines as significant fire hazards, reinforcing concerns about expanding transmission networks in fire-prone areas.
The 500 kw powerline snaked across the tinder dry Wimmera is a huge fire risk and massive burden to CFA volunteers. Insurance for these properties is not possible.
“Projects such as VNI West are cited by Professor Mountain as ‘a massive overbuild and Victoria’s monumental mistake’.
“A local map known as the anti REZ map shows 650,000 hectares of prime agricultural land in the area that do not want and will not host renewable energy infrastructure. This clearly defines a no to the Western REZ zone in the Northern Grampians Shire,” he said.
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