Growing Symbiosis in Competition Between Food, Clean Energy

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Written by Paul Wiseman for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--In this series about agriculture and clean energy, we have examined how biofuel crops are competing against food for a fairly fixed amount of arable land. But the struggle is not just about biology. Wind and solar installations also are called "farms," as they need large swaths of surface area as well.

The Bible, in Matthew 4:45, points out that the sun "rises on the evil and the good" alike. It also shines on solar collectors and alfalfa alike, and wind applies itself similarly. Now a growing number of green energy companies are experimenting with ways to grow food and energy on the same plot. Many are employing government grants to help defray costs.

The concept is known as agrivoltaics. It can include various mixes of wind or solar with either farm or ranch acreage.

The Department of Energy, for one, is offering grants through its InSPIRE (Innovative Solar Practices Integrated with Rural Economies and Ecosystems) program. Also, its Solar Energy Technologies Office program, SETO 2020, offered $130 million to fund research aimed at advancing solar technologies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is another agency offering pilot project funding, as are universities and foundations nationwide.

Grazing Under Power
Nashville, Tennessee-based Silicon Ranch Corporation was awarded $1.8 million of that money toward "testing a novel design for a solar panel tracker and control system to accommodate pasture-based cattle grazing under the solar panels."

Michael Baute, the company's vice president for regenerative energy and carbon removal, explained that Silicon Ranch has been in agrivoltaics for several years already. The privately-held 11-year-old company has been combining tracker-based panels with sheep (for meat) grazing in the southeastern U.S. during that time. The company is now looking to use its first government grant to evaluate the possibility of doing the same thing with cattle.

In some cases, the company contracts with sheep ranchers to bring their flocks onto Silicon Ranch property. In other cases, the company owns the sheep and hires qualified shepherds--from 4-H graduates "all the way up to super-qualified sheep geneticists" to manage the animals and the land.

"We view our land as an asset," Baute said, adding that one goal for grazing sheep or cattle is to keep vegetation from shading the solar panels. Otherwise mowing or herbicides would be necessary, one of which costs money and the other of which hurts the environment.

The intermittent shade provided by the panels during the sun's movement across the sky benefits both animals and plants in the hot summer. It reduces water evaporation from the ground and it reduces heat stress on plants and animals.

Baute noted that the company raised panels from the standard 18 inches off the ground to 24 inches to accommodate animals and, where mowing is still necessary, to reduce the frequency of mowing.

He expects the new project will take at least three years to provide preliminary information on the workability of the system with cattle, a market that he described as much larger than that for mutton. This will eventually allow the company to make a profit off meat and power, as well as to restore land health.

Industrial Info is tracking Silicon Ranch projects with a combined value of nearly $1.29 billion. Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Power Project Database can click here for a list of detailed project reports and here for related plant profiles.

Reportedly, the largest agrivoltaics site is a blueberry farm in Rockport, Maine. Beginning in 2021 and involving 10 acres and 4.2 megawatts (MW) of solar power potential, the University of Maine Cooperative Extension is reviewing data to learn how the panels affect blueberry plant growth.

In Nebraska, wind turbines are dotting rangeland as cattle graze under the whirling blades. While there were concerns about whether the whirring would disturb the animals, ranchers report little if any interference--and the ranches enjoy the extra income received from wind companies.

This income is similar to royalties earned by ranchers in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, North Dakota and elsewhere. In fact, in some areas, wind rights are being sold separately from land, as has been the case for mineral rights for decades.

Baute noted that it is likely that solar panels have shared pasture land for decades, but the real push for agrivoltaics began around five years ago. Acknowledging the tension between renewables and food, he said, "It's a very real concern... However, at this point, the solar industry is 100% able to keep that land in agricultural production through these sheep-grazing models." It may involve a shift from one kind of agriculture to another, but the overall goal still is to have the land do its carbon capture function while the panels do their carbon reduction job.

Research continues and so does the question of whether there will be a winner or if it ends in a tie.

For related information, see June 1, 2022, article - Biofuels Feeder Crops May Be Affected by Skyrocketing Fertilizer Prices and May 23, 2022, article - U.S. Alt-Fuel Refiners, Feedstock Producers Turn to Offseason Crops.

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