Comment by natelegler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by natelegler | Hacker News Reader

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 be utilizing the roofs of hog confinement buildings, poultry buildings, cattle sheds, machine sheds, etc. This also pertains to roofs in urban areas as well. I actually helped with a business putting up a new chemical shed to place solar panels on their roof. There are so many hog sites and poultry sites in my area that this would be a no brainer to try and push towards. Everyone saying eliminate or reduce meat consumption...all it is is a wish and prayer. It won't happen sorry that's just the cold hard truth so the above suggestion is what the world needs in a lot of situations...a compromise.

The next suggestion is some sort of portable solar paneling during the non-growing season. Pull them out of the crop and field work has been done, and remove them before the next season begins.

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 areas NIMBY away solar power in these areas, more than likely the land is just going to have some exurban building plopped down on it.

Also, I don't get the whole thing where people act like farmland is sacred and good for the environment. I like food, I understand the value of farms, but farmland is typically pretty awful for the surrounding environment.

The area I live in Ohio has a whole handful of lakes, and any of them that are surrounded by farmland (and to a certain extent exurbs and suburbs) are incredibly polluted, to the point where you have to look at "forecasts" on ODNR's website to see if the water is healthy to swim in.

0: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2017/Full_Re... (check table 1 for historical data)

> 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.

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.

Here for the most part is semi-rural Minnnesota. Within 45 minutes of MSP airport.

I've also checked out (at a very surface level) areas surrounding Nashville and some places in Idaho.

By "plant" I'm talking mostly about non-rooftop solar. I would ideally like to put up about 200-500kw of panels and various mechanical outbuildings (including batteries) to service said install.

I expected the electric company interconnect problems. I did not expect the political pushback for things no one can see. Ideally I'd like to toss up a small wind turbine or two as well, but that's even more controversial these days.

It's not just legal - it's also I need to live in the area as well.

Edit: I also have a very low tolerance for "administrative bullshit" so take this all with a giant grain of salt. My family is rural and on the local town city council so I am especially exposed to current politics.

If you are self funding this I find it very discouraging that there would be any sort of pushback about this. The areas you were looking at they were rural correct so there wasn't any sort of weird city restrictions on the land?

Only reason I am asking this is because around here we are seeing more and more solar panels going on rooftops plus there was a local grain elevator expansion that took place that they have 6 rows about 50 yards long of solar panels. Not too far away there is another local elevator with the same setup. As far as I know they do not house any storage ability and are simply hooked to the local power company.

I know we have looked into putting rooftops on a few buildings with our own onsite storage (we currently have our own propane back up generator for our livestock) so that way during weather events we can tap into that source to run a few of our things around the farm while our back up generator powers the house and there was zero pushback by anyone. It was personal property so not much they can do about it anyways.

Can you say more about the pushback? It's funny because one farmer in our group is setup for wide row cropping that sort of have alleyways where he has a housing contraption that holds a bunch of chickens and few pigs. It collects rainwater (he also supplements when needed) for the water source and it has a solar powered and stored system for self moving the housing. So think about it like this it goes down the alleyway that is often planted with various grazing grasses/legumes that are consumed by the animals and their "waste" is used for fertilizer for the following year. He will shift his row crops over onto that path the following year.

Sorry to ramble but always interested in issues that are being had in rural areas and how they can be solved by both parties.

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.

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