Yeah, the whole NIMBY thing is a problem and it pisses me off that there are a lot of self-described progressives that hypocritically oppose these projects in their own areas.

I actually live in a mostly rural area that also has a lot of windfarms. That doesn't give me any special insights as I don't work in either industry, but I have observed them both.

> -The turbine themselves plus the access roads and support infrastructure take up space and reduce the amount of farmland available to be farmed. > > -The turbines, access roads and support infrastructure create obstructions in the fields making it more difficult to farm that field.

There are already access roads all around the farmland because semi-trucks are used to haul the produce from the fields. And while the windmills are huge, their footprint is actually pretty small as it's just a giant post at the ground. Maybe around a fifth of an acre each so they don't actually take up very much of the land. They're usually placed on the edges so they don't even create much obstruction.

> -They limit some farming practices (aerial application) and others

True, but crop dusting is expensive so it's really only used on the truly massive farms (around here, at least). The couple of dusters I know make very good livings.

> -The installation of the turbines creates soil compaction and can damage tile, drainage ditches, etc.

It would be minor relative to the day-to-day operations on the farm (semis, massive tractors, etc).

> -The money stream may not go to the farmer and may not be as steady as everyone thinks.

The actual amount of space leased is tiny so, yeah, not really super lucrative, but as you said, it's almost free money for them.

> -To reiterate, not everyone enjoys the aesthetics of wind turbines in their backyard

Rural areas like mine tend to be highly conservative and other than some initial whining about the "stupid environmentalist shit" no one cares anymore. If they'd just force a few on the NIMBYs, they wouldn't either.

Talk about a strawman, it's like you think they built a huge fence around 8000 acres with "no trespassing" signs.

There's a reason this project was built where it was and that's because there's a metric fuckton of mostly empty, undeveloped land. I say mostly empty because a lot of that undeveloped land is used for something and I'd be udderly shocked if you couldn't guess what it is.

What you don't seem to be aware of is that while windfarms take a lot of acreage overall, they're low density, meaning the land can usually be used for other things at the same time. Like, say, grazing cattle or even farming. The land's owner can even get a bit of supplemental income from each little square they lease out.

Will this kind of thing work everywhere? No, of course not, but there are huge areas in the western US where none of the things you've brought up are a problem and it's nothing but win-win.

And the beauty of it is, a huge amount of that is just rangeland, which is basically unimproved land where the cows wander around eating the natural vegetation. The cows don't give a damn if there are some windmills scattered around so the land becomes dual-use and it has very little actual effect on their range.

This is almost certainly the case with most of the acreage used by this project. There's a whole lotta nothing in that area except cattle range and a few tiny farming communities.