More farmers join fight against green energy threats to valuable farm land

This time farmers are in the way of miners rushing to find the rare minerals needed to equip the new generation of wind turbines and electric vehicles.

They have joined those property owners who claim the country is shouldering an unfair burden of "net zero" by surrendering valuable farm land for solar and wind farms and even high voltage power lines.

In Victoria, there are three big mineral sands mines ready to go all at once, with ASX-listed companies strengthened by support of governments to get on with it.

Thousands of hectares of farm land has already been bought up for the mines in a cash windfall for the farm owners which has left their remaining neighbours hurt and angry.

The three mines are near Horsham, Swan Hill and Donald.

The operators say they will work every hour of the day, all week and all year long - for 20 to 40 years, extracting millions of tonnes of ore.

The mineral sands are key to renewable power technology such as wind turbines and electric vehicles, with most of the processing done in China.

Farmers bordering the mines are fighting to stop them.

They say productive agricultural land should be better protected for future generations.

They also fear the road closures, dust, lights and traffic will mean the loss of their rural lifestyle.

Plus they worry their own farms will be soon swallowed up by the mine as well.

VHM, backed by billionaire miner Chris Ellison, plans to first start mining its deposit at Goschen near Swan Hill but has already identified other equally rich prospects nearby.

Its "critical mineral province" now stretches over more than 55km of some of the best cropping country in the southern Mallee, the Cannie Ridge.

Astron Corporation, a mining company incorporated in Hong Kong, wants to supply the Wimmera's rare earths from its Donald mineral sands project to a new partner Energy Fuels in the US.

Australian company WIM Resource Pty Ltd has as its flagship project the Avonbank Mineral Sands Project, 15km north-east of Horsham.

The Horsham mine has just been through an Environment Effects Statement process and is waiting on a government decision to proceed.

The clock is ticking on the Goshen mine.

VHM's 4000-page EES is now on public exhibition for the Cannie Ridge mine plans and the public has until January 17 to comment.

Farmers and their supporters have asked for an extension of time, saying it was unfair to ask them to carefully read its contents and respond over the busy harvest period.

The documents can be read and comments made here.

The Goshen mine project area covers about 1534 hectares (3791 acres) including parts of the Cannie Ridge, locally considered the best cropping country in the region.

VHM has already bought four properties.

Those landowners were said to be supportive of the mine although "views regarding the project among nearby rural residents are more mixed," the EES states.

The EES found there were "perceived inequities between those who benefit financially from the project and those who are negatively affected by the project".

The answer to this for VHM was "neighbour agreements" - compensation offered on a sliding scale depending on how far away from the mine they lived during the life of the mine.

For example, people with homes up to a kilometre from the mine would be offered $25,000 per year, for the life of the project (20 to 25 years).

Those living up to 3.5km from the mine would be offered $5000 per year.

Mine ore will be transported in sealed sea containers via road during the day to Ultima and then railed to the Port of Melbourne for export overseas.

VHM Limited is negotiating with foreign buyers for "offtake arrangements" to buy the ore.

Mineral sands mining is notoriously a water-hungry operation and the Goschen area is famously dry.

VHM plans to pipe water from Kangaroo Lake, a popular recreational lake which is 50km away by road which is part of Goulburn Murray Water's irrigation network.

The company says it will need 4500 megalitres of water from the lake each year "with a steady state during operations of between 2.9 to 3.1 GL/year".

It proposes to pump the water from the lake from a new pump station via a 38km underground pipeline "to be constructed beneath existing local roads".

Water would be purchased through the open water market, the company says.

The mine project also needs its own power station.

VHM plans to initially use diesel or gas generators with a "transition" to renewable power within five years.

The Dooen mineral sands project area near Horsham covers an area of 3600ha.

The proposed mining methods involve open-pit mining to extract approximately 11 million tonnes of ore per year over a projected mine life of 30 years.

"Dealing with this is worse than dealing with a drought," Dooen farmer Gavin Puls has told Wimmera Mail-Times.

"We know what to do in drought, but with this, we don't; there are so many unknowns, and we feel powerless."

"The question we are all asking is why the government and the council would even consider handing over prime grazing land for mining," Mr Puls said.