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Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

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Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#41

Post by ranit »

jahnu wrote: post #13

> There is no unused arable land on a planet that’s already struggling to support a human population that cleared 8 billion last month The amount of this land that is dedicated to growing food for livestock and the livestock themselves is simply astounding. Reducing meat consumption is a much simpler solution and I believe the one that will win out anyway. Complicated solar systems like this will only become relevant…

> Even precision fermentation is an easier to implement fix for land use, which looks increasingly like it can reduce our need for land to grow grains. See Solar Foods for example

What do you refer as "precision fermentation" here? The linked Wikipedia article is about "growing microbial biomass that can be used as edible protein". Just curious, perhaps I missed the connection.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#42

Post by nonethewiser »

photochemsyn wrote: post #33
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #26

Anything that involves constructing precarious fragile structures over large areas of land is not a practical solution. Imagine wanting to harvest your crops and you can’t use any machinery because of all the structures. Or imagine there is a slight wind and it rips up 200k in solar panels.

You just place the panels far enough apart that agricultural machinery can move up and down the rows (this also ensures plants aren't overly shaded). As far as wind resistance, robust design seems to solve that problem. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/16/baywa-velux-sign-euro... > "According to BayWa, the installation will have rows of panels spaced more widely than usual, to allow passage of agricultural machine…

Or simply take the same amount of space and keep the solar panels and crops separate.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#43

Post by smeej »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #32
jahnu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago. Increases in population are down to not dying young. In almost all regions of the world people are having fewer children and trending towards lower than replacement levels as the necessity to having enough children that survive to adulthood and can care for you in old age disappears. These are hard facts. Given these facts the suggestion that we…

> implies all sorts of horrible utterly unethical “solutions”. No it doesn't and I am tired of the dishonesty of that claim, which is nothing more than an ad hominem attack aimed at shutting down discussion. Please refrain from this type of behaviour. > There are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago. Nice tidbit but irrelevant to the point, which is population growth. Anyway, there clearly is…

It doesn't imply those horrible solutions exclusively, but it's pretty hard to look at the forced sterilization of parents and abortion of children for generations in China and argue that it doesn't imply them at all.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#44

Post by phil21 »

reportingsjr wrote: post #37
natelegler wrote: post #28

Here is my take as someone that is involved in farming in the Midwest. Both row crops and livestock: Taking out productive land to put in a solar farm is not practical. There are loads of acres that would be a perfect fit such as pasture land no longer being utilized for grazing. Or if there is pasture being used for grazing with sheep/goats would be another good place for these to be placed. Another suggestion would…

Farmland in the midwest has been shrinking consistently for decades. Your comments would make sense if the opposite of this were true, and there was demand for additional farmland, but there isn't. Ohio reduced the amount of land it needed for farming by about 800,000 acres from 1997-2017 and in that period increase agricultural output[0], so it's not like the amount of food produced is going down! If people in rural…

> If people in rural areas NIMBY away solar power in these areas

This really needs to be talked about more. Solar becoming a religious political topic is tiring at best.

I've been looking for property for about half a year now, with the goal of a small house on a large (10 acres+) property with a "large" solar plant in the back. The number of places where this is basically impossible to do (politically) if you are not a giant corporate is the norm. I doubt there is a "solar friendly" county in the country.

People vehemently fight this stuff even if the only potential way you'd ever see the panels is via drone. It's honestly really depressing, and I've been curtailing my dreams due to it.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#45

Post by photochemsyn »

nonethewiser wrote: post #42
photochemsyn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just place the panels far enough apart that agricultural machinery can move up and down the rows (this also ensures plants aren't overly shaded). As far as wind resistance, robust design seems to solve that problem. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/16/baywa-velux-sign-euro... > "According to BayWa, the installation will have rows of panels spaced more widely than usual, to allow passage of agricultural machine…

Or simply take the same amount of space and keep the solar panels and crops separate.

Integration has benefits for many crops in many regions. For example, many fruits and vegetables develop better under some shade. See this USDA blurb:

> "Commercial farms growing high value fruits and vegetables use shade structures to create protected environments. These growers benefit from bigger yields, better quality produce, fewer pests, timed crop growth, and resource conservation. Unfortunately, shade structure use is limited for many small and medium size farms who lack economy of scale. Commercial shade structures available today are very expensive to purchase and install as well as difficult and time-consuming to move."

Solar structures mean the farms generate revenue from the shade systems, although initial cost-of-installation is high.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#46

Post by phil21 »

locallost wrote: post #9

Even if this is a good solution, there's probably so much space for capacity in e.g. parking lots and roads that I doubt there's a need for this, other than it being beneficial to the farmers. Which is a good enough reason, but the lack of space issues for solar panels are misleading. A sidenote on the first sentence in the article: I question the narrative that we are struggling to support 8 billion people because o…

> For instance I've seen estimates that 20-30% of perfectly good food is thrown away these days because it's not esthetically pleasing, e.g. a cucumber that might be of unusual shape. Also it's more economical to throw away food that you can't sell but is still good, than it is to give it away because then people would spend less which is bad for business. I don't know if this is a solvable problem, but it exists.

I'm highly skeptical of this. I have direct experience as my family were (until covid) market gardeners who would sell to farmers markets, local supermarkets, and restaurants.

Typically "nothing" gets wasted in these operations. You sell the prime produce at huge markups at the farmers markets, the mid-tier at the supermarkets, and the food service industry gives exactly zero care to the aesthetics of the produce so long as it's high quality and tastes good.

I can't imagine this would be any different at an industrial scale, if anything the incentives become even greater. You sort your produce for the market vs. industrial use, and the latter is likely to be a far more reliable income stream. I doubt farmers are throwing away 30% of their product.

Yes, there is a lot of loss along the way - but I'm not sure we can really do much better short of everyone growing everything locally.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#47

Post by natelegler »

reportingsjr wrote: post #37
natelegler wrote: post #28

Here is my take as someone that is involved in farming in the Midwest. Both row crops and livestock: Taking out productive land to put in a solar farm is not practical. There are loads of acres that would be a perfect fit such as pasture land no longer being utilized for grazing. Or if there is pasture being used for grazing with sheep/goats would be another good place for these to be placed. Another suggestion would…

Farmland in the midwest has been shrinking consistently for decades. Your comments would make sense if the opposite of this were true, and there was demand for additional farmland, but there isn't. Ohio reduced the amount of land it needed for farming by about 800,000 acres from 1997-2017 and in that period increase agricultural output[0], so it's not like the amount of food produced is going down! If people in rural…

I know that you understand that farmland has been pulled out during periods when prices were low and the government programs paid more. You also know that farmland is getting bought out for cities to expand. It makes sense why the farmland acres have shrunken there is no argument there.

Output has gone up because yield trend has been increasing. I'd know this because even 10 years ago 200bu corn was great for us...now 250 bu is what we hit.

Am I going to argue there are some operations that do not take proper steps to ensure that what they put on their ground stays on their ground? No because there are. However for our personal operation and a growing number I'd pull water coming out of our field tiles and put it up against the water you buy in the store. Then I'd take the same water coming out of our field tiles against the runoff of water from the parking lot, or the streets in the city or the yards in the suburbs.

There is a reason why I am apart of a growing number of farmers who are pushing for soil health and utilizing practices that benefit the environment in a measurable way. We do not agree with the way a lot of the conventional operations are doing it. Heck there are a handful of solutions that have been presented to the state and national government in order to further move the number of acres that are doing these things to avoid the situation that you mentioned about Ohio and their lakes. We hate that as much as you do.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#48

Post by natelegler »

phil21 wrote: post #44
reportingsjr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmland in the midwest has been shrinking consistently for decades. Your comments would make sense if the opposite of this were true, and there was demand for additional farmland, but there isn't. Ohio reduced the amount of land it needed for farming by about 800,000 acres from 1997-2017 and in that period increase agricultural output[0], so it's not like the amount of food produced is going down! If people in rural…

> If people in rural areas NIMBY away solar power in these areas This really needs to be talked about more. Solar becoming a religious political topic is tiring at best. I've been looking for property for about half a year now, with the goal of a small house on a large (10 acres+) property with a "large" solar plant in the back. The number of places where this is basically impossible to do (politically) if you are no…

Curious where is here for you? When you say solar plant you mean the plant itself or the panels?

What is done around here is panels go up, they have storage and anything extra gets fed back into the grid where they are paid out in the form of credit from the power company.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#49

Post by jcampbell1 »

maxerickson wrote: post #21
jahnu wrote: post #13

> There is no unused arable land on a planet that’s already struggling to support a human population that cleared 8 billion last month The amount of this land that is dedicated to growing food for livestock and the livestock themselves is simply astounding. Reducing meat consumption is a much simpler solution and I believe the one that will win out anyway. Complicated solar systems like this will only become relevant…

Even with it taking up much more space than a lot of other power sources, the amount of solar needed to run the world will take up a relatively modest amount of space. Tens of thousands of square miles is a lot, but it's pretty manageable if the discussion is optimizing global land use. Also, "unused arable land" is probably true, but there's likely more than 0 land that could be converted to agriculture from some ot…

I came up with 15 million acres of panels would provide all the US energy needs. We currently have 39 million acres of corn dedicated to putting ethanol in our gasoline.

Re: Solar panels open crop lands to farming energy

#50

Post by ETH_start »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #15
jahnu wrote: post #13

> There is no unused arable land on a planet that’s already struggling to support a human population that cleared 8 billion last month The amount of this land that is dedicated to growing food for livestock and the livestock themselves is simply astounding. Reducing meat consumption is a much simpler solution and I believe the one that will win out anyway. Complicated solar systems like this will only become relevant…

The root cause of the problem was plainly mentioned: 8 billion people and counting. Solutions to problems ought to address root causes.

The root problem is that this number of people is considerable relative to the productive potential of Earth-based resources.

Possible solutions include raising the productive potential of those resources, like the effort described in the article, and acquiring more resources beyond Earth. Neither of those two requires reducing the human population. So I think you're being inexplicably hasty in offering a drastic anti life solution.

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