Back around 2011, Jonathan Cobb and his wife Kaylyn had what he called a “simple game plan.”He said they would take hundreds of acres of leased and family-owned farmland in central Texas — land that has been growing corn and cotton for decades — and give it “what it wants.”
What it wants, Cobb estimates, is a tall native plant, such as silver blue stems, yellow Indian grass and Maximilian sunflowers, digging their roots deep into the heavy clay soil, which he thinks will be ” Building carbon and resilience to the place, as well as water holding capacity, nutrient cycling — all of which requires having land that can regenerate.”
Ultimately, Cobbs decided to bring in livestock grazing, mimicking the bison herds that once roamed these grasslands, and adding nutrients with their manure, and voila: they’ve got meat to market while restoring the planet, storing carbon, and preserving the farmland.
At the time, Cobb and his Green Fields Farm were hailed by various sustainability-minded nonprofits as a model for regenerative agriculture—essentially, a set of interconnected and connected soils related to building healthy, carbon-storing soils. Holistic planting practices, including cover planting, avoiding tillage, pesticides and monocropping, using compost and planting windbreaks, are all a means of growing healthy food in a healthy environment.Cobb was also cited as evidence that farmers, a notoriously change-averse group, could get rid of traditional, chemical-dependent commodity crops and still be profitable.
If commodity farmers can be persuaded to make the transition, and governments can encourage regenerative practices with better incentives, then agriculture can act as a climate change solution rather than an aggravator.
Storing an extra 2 percent of carbon in soil would restore atmospheric greenhouse gases to “safe” levels, according to one estimate.If commodity farmers can be persuaded to make the transition, and if governments can encourage regenerative practices with better incentives, then agriculture can act as a climate change solution rather than an aggravator.
It sounds easy.Nothing.Adding to the overall complexity of regenerative farming of more land is the irony that, in some growing regions, this effort is being undermined by another key climate solution: solar energy.Around Cobb, land-owning neighbors began renting out their fertile farmland—not to farmers, but to solar companies that didn’t work at a time when we needed more, not less, to grow food. reproduction.
Climate change, and rapid population growth in some places, has created the need to expand food production at a time when farmland has become more expensive; the act of growing food is also increasingly seen as a prospect of financial loss.According to the American Farmland Trust (AFT), U.S. farmers offloaded 11 million acres of farmland for development between 2001 and 2016, which could shut down production forever—let alone convert it to renewables.Just weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its second climate assessment in February, which pointed to climate mitigation strategies that are having unintended negative impacts, Cobb is frustrated by his continuing career prospects for regeneration.The cost of maintaining a business is high, and the fact that landowners in his area are leasing to solar seems to portend more trouble to come.
The challenges facing agriculture – not to mention the transition to regeneration – are likely to be high.Cobb went through a steep learning curve and also clashed with relatives who were staunchly opposed to changing existing farming methods, which led to the division of the sibling’s land.Cobb, the rented landowner, also objected to mixing things up.”Their father and grandfather spent their lives removing all the weeds, and they wanted [the land] to be blackened and tilled because that’s what successful farming looks and feels like,” Cobb said.
Some challenges may not be planned.In Petaluma, Calif. — not currently fighting solar energy — sheep and goat farmer Tamara Hicks purchased foreclosed land that was once a traditional dairy farm with the intention of regeneratively farming it.It’s in a tragic state she calls “Breaking-Bad bad.”Methadone found in some soil samples; refrigerators, trucks, tractors “recycled” in pits dug in hillsides; cesspools bursting near cesspools; 10,000 tires piled in ravines to stabilise damage caused by generations Soil depleted and eroded by grazing habits.Before Hicks can plant native seeds, buy ungulates, or figure out who to turn to for technical support when applying for tree-planting grants and launching other regeneration practices, at least some of the confusion must be cleared up.
Undoubtedly, clean energy, including solar, is critical to avoiding the more dire impacts of climate change, so the fact that utility-scale solar in the U.S. grew 26% between 2019 and 2020 seems to be is a positive development.”Without a lot of solar power, we won’t be able to achieve our climate goals or get anywhere close,” said AFT research director Mitch Hunter.
Similarly, regenerative (ie conservation) agricultural practices have been touted by international research nonprofits such as Project Drawdown as agricultural corrective measures we are currently practicing, which release 698 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually in the United States.The United States alone pollutes waterways, poisoning people and wildlife.Long-term, large-scale studies are still needed to quantify the effectiveness of regenerated cropland in storing carbon.However, smaller, short-term studies and centuries of experience from indigenous regenerative agriculture practitioners and newcomers such as Cobb and Hicks suggest that rich, resilient soils that resist erosion during intensification of storms can survive droughts and support biological growth. Diversity is better.
However, “it’s much simpler for many farmers to just sign on the dotted line and get paid to [lease] their land for solar power than to try out all the complexities of regenerative agriculture in particular – a problem that needs to be jumped over,” Hunter said.”Texas is a leader, but it’s everywhere, so we need to figure out, how do you do solar in a way that’s good for farmers, good for the climate, good for the land?” (As the Washington Post The push and pull between the solar industry and nonfarmland in Texas also occurred in one instance, as the newspaper reported earlier this month, as it involved a pristine prairie that environmentalists were trying to preserve.)
Hunter isn’t the only one wondering how to have it all, climate-wise.According to Clean Energy Wire, Germany recently passed legislation to open up agricultural land to solar energy in a way that allows “parallel use of food and energy production areas.”BloombergQuint reports that the government will support farmers to add solar power to 15 percent of their land, although this combination is more expensive than solar alone.German ministers also mentioned the importance of keeping agricultural land productive to maintain food security.
In the US, more basic agricultural photovoltaics are being used with sheep, which are lower than cattle and therefore better able to graze with solar panels.
Japan has been legislating around agri-PV (simply, solar panels that allow some kind of agriculture-related use around and below it) since at least 2013, when it required what it called “solar power sharing”, which is Building solar projects on farmland must take into account various crop or livestock production.The country also hopes to use agricultural power generation as a potential way to bring abandoned farmland back into production.
In the U.S., Hunter said, farm-based solar “is a space of possibilities.” It protects plants from too much sun and heat, it reduces water usage, and it increases yields.”But it’s still in the early stages of development” and the biggest challenge to implementing it at scale is cost.The solar panels may be too low for tall native plants like Cobb to grow, or for his cattle to meander under them, or for farm machinery to pass, which is where the expense comes in.It takes more steel to get off the ground to support the positions they sit in,” Hunter said, and more steel equals more money.
In the US, more basic agricultural photovoltaics are being used with sheep, which are lower than cattle and therefore better able to graze with solar panels.But we still need what Hunter calls “tip-of-the-art” systems that have moving panels to allow light to reach plants below, or optimally manage rainfall so it reaches the soil in the right place—not to mention housing the cows.”We’re still at a point where we have to identify cost-effective and scalable models,” he said.
However, it is under study.At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, Energy-Water-Land lead analyst Jordan Macknick is studying what he calls “solar development opportunities that can make agricultural land and Soil benefits and provides value”.NREL’s InSPIRE project, funded by the Department of Energy, is studying the potential of agri-PV in crop, grazing, pollinator habitat and greenhouse systems at 25 locations across the country — looking at the details of the solar energy required for each system and how the panels affect things like soil moisture and erosion.
“One of the big barriers to doing more regenerative farming is that most people can’t afford the $30,000 to buy a planter that they only need once or twice a year.”
Still, McNick agrees with Hunter that cost is a major barrier to implementing such projects, although some workarounds exist.Instead of raising the solar panels to let livestock and equipment pass, “you can also increase the distance between a row of solar panels,” he said.”We’re really thinking about how to design these systems with farmers from the start to make sure there’s enough sidewalks … and you [consider] where the irrigation infrastructure is … and the fences don’t get too close to the panels so you’re Can’t turn the tractor anymore – those little things that ultimately affect whether the farmer will say yes, I really want to do it, or no, it’s not worth my time.”
It is also important for the solar industry to think hard about how to adapt to agricultural PV.For some companies, agri-PV fits into their overall mission of reducing carbon emissions and improving environmental conditions.For others, the fact that operating and maintenance costs can be reduced when grazing sheep “prune” the plants growing around the panels is an advantage, as this translates into an economic incentive for solar operators.Still, Macknick argues that industrial row crops are located on the majority of agricultural land suitable for solar power, and are and will continue to be a weak link when it comes to agricultural photovoltaics—solar panels and giant combine harvesters are poor companions.But smaller renewable farms are perfect for solar power.To that end, “we try to incorporate practice and provide research that helps how agriculture can be part of this broader regenerative agriculture movement,” McNick said.
How to get farmers to keep cultivating their land until some sort of accidental balance between farming and solar power is struck is a looming question.Again, it mostly comes down to finance.”One of the big barriers to doing more regenerative farming is that most people can’t afford to pay $30,000 for a planter they only need once or twice a year,” Hicks said.She believes that sharing equipment and finding knowledgeable mentors who can help save time and resources are ways to make farming more affordable.Likewise, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) and AFT’s agricultural conservation easements purchase development rights (or, in the case of the AFT, provide landowners with tax incentives to relinquish development rights) from landowners and cancel them, to ensure that the land is permanently cultivated; for example, this gives farmers money to add value-added products to their operations.With her MALT easement, Hicks built a creamery and expanded her barn.
Back in Texas, Cobb wasn’t sure how long he could continue farming the land.To add to the pressure, his parents have been considering leasing part of the family farmland.”They don’t want to do it, but their income is fixed,” Cobb said.“If they put 80 acres into solar, they could make $50,000 a year. But that would take away my 80 acres of ranch.” That loss would be bigger than it appears on paper.
“A farmer who has retired from farming, a lot of knowledge that one person has is no longer available for farming, let alone [losing] the land,” Hunter said.“Theoretically, the solar panels could be removed and you could farm [the land] again. But the knowledge, the community, the infrastructure if half of your neighbors are sold out and there’s nowhere to bring your product now, well, that’s a big problem. We need to start discussing the trade-offs very seriously.”
Lela Nargi is a veteran reporter covering food policy and agriculture, sustainability, and science for the Washington Post, JSTOR Daily, Sierra, Ensia, and Civil Eats, among others.Find her at lelanargi.com.
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Post time: Apr-28-2022
