More and more farmers are combining their harvests with lucrative second “crops,” a practice recently profiled on the public radio program “Science Friday.”
At the start of the show, host Ila Fratto noted that American farmers, looking for ways to make their farmland “more economically and environmentally stable,” are turning to solar panels.
“Agrivoltaics” is a portmanteau of “agriculture” and “photovoltaics,” which refers to the conversion of sunlight into electricity. Although the concept of agricultural photovoltaics was proposed in the 1980s, it only began to attract widespread attention in the past decade.
As Fratto points out, solar panels provide needed shade for many crops, and evaporation “cools the panels,” a microcosm of how agrivoltaics can work symbiotically in a farm environment.
KBIA News Producer Jana Rose Schleis discusses agrivoltaics on Science Friday, delving into the subject through practical applications in the Midwest.
Fratto asked Schleiss whether farmers “make money” from both harvests – the crops they grow and the energy their farms get from the sun – and Schleiss agreed.
“A farmer used to say to me, it’s kind of like farming for sunlight,” she recalls.
Linda Hetzel, who has farmed the same land in Missouri for three decades, installed solar panels after first trying leaves for shade during the 2012 drought.
According to Schlais, not only Hetzel’s crops were affected by the high temperatures; As temperatures rise, she has had to adjust her approach to avoid dangerous midday temperatures.
Schless said Hetzel found that “the intensity of the heat she experienced each summer would change to the point where she would get up at the crack of dawn and harvest before it got too hot, not only for herself to work in the outdoor conditions but also to harvest the produce.”
Fratto then discussed the feasibility of on-farm solar arrays, barriers to adoption and farmer feedback on renewable energy and their own land with Madhu Khanna, a professor of environmental economics at the University of Illinois.
Fratto told Khanna that some farmers and ranchers discussed their direct experiences on Science Friday, and at least one of them reported being more profitable on the energy side than on the crops.
“I remember, a few years ago, I was talking to a rancher in Oklahoma who owned the first wind farm, a very small wind farm. He said, ‘I make more money doing renewable energy than ranching,'” he asked Khanna if agrivoltaics could be a stable backup source of income.
“[Energy] Produce is a higher value and less risky commodity than crop farming,” Khanna noted.
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