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Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

At which point would it be financially beneficial for a farmer to turn a field into a solar farm rather than plant a crop? I have no knowledge in economics of either so I couldn't even estimate.

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There's a lot of farmland and ranch land in the US that shouldn't be farmland or ranch land. They're too dry, too hot, and competing for water resources with people and natural (sometimes endangered) ecosystems.

So, maybe it's something that should be encouraged; the food those farms and ranches produce would need to be replaced by food grown in more appropriate climates, and we'd need to rethink our recent "local food" movement, in some regards, but agriculture, and particularly animal agriculture, are an ecological disaster almost everywhere they exist. Couple that with limited water resources (where a lot of agriculture takes place in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico) and you've got a recipe for serious problems long-term.

That said, agriculture could also shift. Less water-intensive foods, more foods that are appropriate for the area they're being consumed in.

Anyway, I think solar farms replacing agricultural farms could be a net win for the environment, even before considering the improvements that come from turning off coal-fired plants.

Hah! Only if dictatorship could ordain things to be done so correctly. Unfortunately we live in a capitalistic democracy.

Where do you live? How come your goverment isn't able to control taxation, or its regulatory environment?

Are you sincere in your belief that only a dictatorship could lead to more environmentally responsible agriculture and land use in the US? It seems like trolling, but if you're sincere, I could point you to some references on how our current laws reward irresponsible water and land use in many cases. There are many things a "capitalistic democracy" (if that's really what we are living in, which I also think is debatable) can do, and many things that are already being done, to guide how land owners utilize their land. The unintended consequences of current agricultural and water-use law in places like some parts of California, which have experienced more years of drought than years of normal rainfall for more than a decade, have been pretty significant. Government at local, state, and federal levels, have helped create the problems I'm talking about, so why shouldn't they be able to help alleviate them?

Presumably those laws were put in place because somebody benefits from them. Possibly somebody who makes campaign donations.

In that case, the government may technically be able to solve the problem in a way that's better for everyone, but not willing to, as the politicians who make the change could lose their campaign donations or their seats.

For farms that are too hot, a possibility might be that they'd be able to alternate crops with solar panels, and it would shorten the day's sun when the crops are in the shadow of the panels.

Solar panels might get in the way of them using their farm equipment if they're close together.

If you completely ignore repairing and paying for the automation you hypothetically could build a farm where the solar panels were on arms that would pull them out of the way of the tractors/combines or whatever.

I wonder if the weight of solar panels would prevent them being mounted on a wheeled device like the rolling irrigation systems used on many farms? Those are pretty robust and don't break frequently or require much maintenance; in the case of solar panels, they wouldn't even need to move frequently (so no need for permanent motors on them; you could just hook them to tractors or trucks and tow them out of the way). Though, there would need to be a lot more of them, and moving a bunch of them for harvest time or other stuff that required them out of the way would take a lot of time.

Not a serious problem: Europeans already invented extra-narrow tractors for vineyards. You'd be amazed how much machinery they can drive between rows of plants that appear to be tightly packed. Or you can install the panels on tall stilts and drive under.

My understanding is that transportation is actually a small factor in total food emissions. It seems that promoting "local food" without paying attention to whether that food can be optimally produced locally, might be more environmentally unfriendly than simply producing it wherever it is most efficient to produce and then transporting it.

For rail or ship delivery especially, yes. For trucks, somewhat less so, and for air, generally not.

Ships and rail both favour crops which store well (grains) or can be shipped frozen or refrigerated. For fresh fruit and vegetables, time is critical, and you generally want to be on store shelves within at most a few days. That's where trade-offs between location, farming costs (particularly for greenhoused or hydroponic farming) vs. transport start to get factored in. There are reasons why a generation ago you simply didn't have fresh produce out of season.

Disagree with agriculture being a disaster everywhere. Here in the midwest (Michigan, in my case) we get so much rain that there's rarely, if ever a need to artificially irrigate. Personally, the land that my horse pastures are on is so good that I threw seed on it and it just started growing. I do put a little bit of fertilizer down every few years, but mostly to replace the nutrients that are removed (baling, etc. will eventually deplete the land if you don't). Stuff grows here with very little encouragement.

On a related note, an agricultural high school near me has a field dedicated to solar panels, that powers most of the school buildings. The students are learning how to farm photons alongside corn.

http://solarbuildermag.com/news/church-farm-school-in-pennsy...

Diminishing returns mean you end up covering deserts with solar before farm land. Next, highly marginal farm land.

On the other hand, wind farms have a tiny footprint so that's already a major thing in some areas.

RE: Windfarms

This has been a dramatic change in the US midwest landscape over the last decade. When driving through Iowa or Kansas these days, the horizon is constantly dotted with wind turbines nestled in amongst the corn fields or livestock pastures. 15 years ago this was NOT the case.

Yup. You can even see it from the air. With ever-increasing turbine sizes, these things are easily visible from 39,000 ft.

I don't see a way to link it directly but the layers on this map can be adjusted to show the many wind and solar projects in the US:

http://www.eia.gov/state/maps.cfm

This is a common mistake that people make, especially when talking about fancy, flashy technologies, like drive way solar panels, road solar panels, ect

We do not have a shortage of land or places to put solar panels. Land is cheap, cheap, cheap compared to the other costs of solar panels.

There is no need to come up with fancy schemes to convert roads or windows or farms or whatever to solar panels. We aren't running out of land for them any time soon.

In arid regions with a low crop per acre yield it's beneficial right now. If the farmer has the money to finance it by himself it's almost certainly beneficial. But ofcourse it's better to just put them on your roof. In Germany and The Netherlands most farmers have solar panels on their (quite large) barns.

Farmland is already being converted, with predictable NIMBY reactions:

http://watchdog.org/191942/critics-want-sunshine-huge-mn-sol...

http://www.startribune.com/big-solar-parks-proposed-for-minn...

Including "prime" farmland:

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/02/03/opponents-want-minne...

Well the farmer doing it himself wouldn't be financially attractive (too big setup costs). But if the farmer is the land owner then he could rent it out to a power business that are good for the upfront costs. The exact point that would happen is when all the cheaper (non-arable) available land is already covered. That might have already happened in specific locations and countries.

Note that at the moment upfront costs (the panels) are so expensive it will be a long time before solar panel 'fields' would become any significant fraction of total arable land. I.E. a simple few acre farm field might be worth a couple hundred thousand euros, but totally filling it with panels might cost billions.

I think the economics of food production will probably trounce that of power production. In any event, it's more efficient to stick solar panels in the desert and wire electricity to places that are less sunny.

The Gulf states are the most polluting per capita on the planet, so great planetary benefit can be derived even just by using the power where it's generated.

Or do both! Grow mushrooms under the panels.

Raise panels up a bit and can graze animals underneath them too.

Cows would tear them up pretty quickly by rubbing up against them. Not saying they couldn't be re-enforced but I just wouldn't stick em out in a field with livestock.

The grass under/behind the panels would grow using what light source? I have a hard time growing grass under some shade trees that are far from opaque and along a [solid, south-facing] fence line.

I think you get fined if you do that.

Where? Even if this was true, surely it would depend on where you live, yeah? Country and local laws would vary?

The questions was what it would cost a farmer, not farmer in place where it's obviously illegal?

What...

Just for the sake of trivial knowledge (your comment is obviously correct that it varies) it is actually forbidden in Sardinia (Italy) to replace farmland with solar power fields.

You are only allowed to setup photovoltaic panels if you have plants below them (asparagus and some flowers grow fine, apparently).

I have no idea why.

Care to explain? Because unless you're arguing along the lines of something something farm subsidies, I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

Usually farmland is zoned only for farmland use. You need an inspector to approve any building, and it must be related to farm use.

In Oregon, here's the list of allowed uses of farmland: http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/215.213

You could probably install solar panels for the purpose of powering your house and farm equipment, but you couldn't install solar panels everywhere and sell the electricity to the public:

"Utility facilities necessary for public service, including wetland waste treatment systems but not including commercial facilities for the purpose of generating electrical power for public use by sale or transmission towers over 200 feet in height."

It's not just a local thing: Maybe there are places where it doesn't hold, but the government wants to ensure the US isn't dependent on other countries for food. So it puts restrictions on the farmland to ensure that there's always enough food available.

OTOH, if by 'farmland', you meant 'desert in Nevada', I can't imagine anyone would care if you bought it up and installed panels there.

Thanks. It's been so long since I've lived in farm land that I forgot about "let's not turn farm land into subdivisions" zoning.

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