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This dairy farm installed solar panels in the California Central Valley. George Rose/Getty images
Imagine you own a small 20 -acre farm in California’s Central Valley. You and your family have grown this land for decades, but drought, increasing costs and reducing the availability of water every year.
Now imagine that the solar electricity developer turns to you and delivers three options:
You can rent 10 ares from otherwise productive crops, on which the developer will build many solar panels and sell electricity to a local energy company.
You can choose 1 or 2 ha of your land on which you can build and control your solar collector using some electricity to your farm and sell the rest for utility.
Or you can continue as you were, hoping that your farm can somehow survive.
Thousands of farmers across the country, including the Central Valley, choose one of the first two options. US Department of Agriculture 2022 The survey found that about 117,000 US economy operations have a certain solar device. Our own work has identified more than 6,500 solar collectors currently in the US -based land.
Our study with nearly 1,000 solar panels has been made of 10,000 acres of the central valley over the last two decades, and solar energy and farming have been found to supplement each other in farmers’ business operations. As a result, farmers make and save more money, using less water – helping them to keep their land and living.
Perhaps the US may not be more valuable or more productive than California’s Central Valley. This region produces many crops, including almost all of the nation’s almonds, olive and sweet rice. Using less than 1% of the country’s total land, Central Valley supplies a quarter of the nation’s food, including 40% of its fruits, nuts and other fresh foods.
Food, fuel and fiber produced by these farms are the nation’s economy, food system and lifestyle.
However, decades of intense cultivation, urban development and climate change presses farmers. Water is limited and more: 2014 The state law adopted requires farmers to further reduce the use of water by the mid-2040.
The Central Valley of California is one of the most productive plants in the country. Planet/UCG/Universal Images Group Citizen via Getty Images
When our solar panels were installed, the California state solar energy policy and incentives have given Farm landowners new ways to diversify their income, leasing their land in the sun’s matrices or build their own.
There was an obvious compromise: the crop rotation used by the crop used for agriculture usually means losing agricultural production. We estimated that over 25 years of solar matrices, this land would have produced enough food to feed 86,000 people a year, assuming that they eat 2000 calories per day.
The benefits of clean energy were also obvious: these arrays created enough renewable electricity for 470,000 US households every year.
However, the result we expected to determine and evaluate was the economic transfer of this land from agriculture farming to solar farming. We found that farmers who installed solar energy were dramatically better than those who did not.
They were better in two ways, the first were financially. All farmers, whether they had their own massifs or leased their land for others, saved money on seeds, fertilizers and other costs associated with growing and harvesting. They also made money from the land lease by compensating for the economic energy accounts and selling their surplus.
The farmers who owned their own array had to pay for panels, equipment and installation and maintenance. However, even with these costs, their savings and earnings increased to $ 50,000 each year for an acre, 25 times the amount they would have earned when planting that acre.
Farmers who rented their land earned much less money, but still avoided the cost of irrigation of water and operations in that part of their farm, receiving $ 1100 for the AKRA for a year-no costs.
Farmers also preserved water, which in turn confirmed to comply with the requirements for reducing the use of water management of the State’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Most solar matrices were installed on land, which was previously irrigated. We estimated that by turning off the irrigation on this earth, saved enough water each year to supply about 27 million people in drinking water or to irrigate 7,500 acres of gardens. After the installation of a solar collector, some farmers also had the surrounding land, which may have enabled a new stable flow of income, which further reduced water consumption.
Irrigation is the key to crop productivity in the Central Valley of California. Some ground cover with solar panels eliminates the need to irrigate the area, to save water for other purposes elsewhere. Planet/UCG/Universal Images Group Citizen via Getty Images
The central valley and elsewhere are now growing both food and energy. This shift can offer long -term safety of agricultural landowners, especially for those who install and control their arrays.
Recent calculations show that converting from 1.1% to 2.4% of the country’s cultivated land into solar panels, along with other sources of clean energy, develop enough electricity to eliminate the need for a nation for fossil fuel power plants.
While many crops are a global market share that can adapt to the changes in supply, losing this cultivated land can affect the availability of some crops. Fortunately, farmers and landowners are looking for new ways to protect cultivated land and food safety while maintaining clean energy.
One such approach is Agrivoltacha, where farmers install solar energy to graze animals or raise crops under plates. Solar energy can also be arranged on less productive cultivated land or in cultivated land used for biofuel rather than food production.
Even in these places, arrays can be created and created for local agriculture and natural ecosystems. With thoughtful design, sitting and management, Solar can return to the Earth and the ecosystems it touches.
Farms are much more than their land and goods they produce. Farms are owned by people with families whose well -being depends on essential and variable resources such as water, fertilizers, fuel, electricity and crop sales. Farmers often borrow money during the planting season, hoping to earn enough harvest time to pay the debt and a little profit.
Solar installation on their land can provide farmers a variety of income, help them save water and reduce the risk of bad year. This can turn solar energy into farming, not a threat to food supply.
This article has been published from a conversation, non -profit, independent news organizations that provide you with facts and reliable analysis to help you give meaning to our complex world. It wrote this: Jacob Studas, Michigan State University; Annick anktil, Michigan State Universityand Anthony Kendall, Michigan State University
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Jacob Studas works at the University of Michigan State. Funding for this work was formed by the US Department of Agriculture at the National Food and Agricultural Institute and the Department of Land and Environmental Sciences at the State University of Michigan. He also receives funding from the Food and Agricultural Research Foundation.
Annick Anctil gets funding from NSF and USDA.
Anthony Kendall receives funding from USDA, NASA, NSF and Food and Agricultural Research. He is an associate professor at the Michigan State University and works at the Flow Water defense board, not profitable.
