**4. Current challenges with respect to solar farm deployment**

The deployment of solar farms may cause a series of issues from changes in land cover and landscape to impacts on environmental and economic functions of the designated land and surrounding areas (cf. **Table 1**). A change in land cover has potential environmental impacts on biodiversity as well as ecological value and function [16]. These environmental impacts are possible not only at the site of the solar farm itself but also in nearby areas whose ecological systems are inseparable. As land is taken up by solar panels, this affects the landscape and original function of the land, and economic impacts on the agricultural industry may occur due to a compromised microclimate under the panels due to a decrease solar radiation, less rain uptake, and so on [22].

In addition to these various generalizable issues, Taiwan has encountered some unique issues of its own in implementing solar farm policy; the original functioning of some agro-farms has degraded or been abandoned altogether due to insufficiently robust design of the relevant laws initiated by the then inexperienced legislature; cheating and illegal behavior of agro-solar farm owners has occurred, and high costs and intensive labor requirements for the monitoring and enforcing of these laws have been incurred (cf. **Table 1**). In 2013 the regulations for building solar panels on agricultural land were first included in the law by the central government's agricultural agency [18]. At this time, however, a considerable amount of farmland had already been replaced by solar farms due to premature laws that did not require the participation of agricultural agencies in the process of reviewing solar farm applications. Later in 2017 newly implemented laws required the agrosolar farm to maintain the agricultural function to the degree required in the review process, and failing to keep up this agricultural performance would cause termination of the solar farms in the worst case. The high financial return possible from solar power caused cheating and illegal farming practices to skirt these requirements to occur, which in turn calls for high-cost and labor-intensive monitoring on behalf of the government to enforce these laws, particularly given the enormous number of cases [19, 23]. In addition to this incentive to mismanage the agricultural side of solar-agro production, some tenants' farming businesses have been terminated altogether by landlords seeking these higher revenues from solar energy [20].
