• essell@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    It can be really good to cover the fields!

    Reduce evaporation, expand the range of plants that can grow and provide subsidies for hard pressed farmers

    Protecting food and water resources are going to get increasingly important over the next few decades

    • Inucune@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Farmers are the biggest welfare queens in this country. They all bitch and moan about needing subsidies and everything but they all have crop insurance.

      • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 days ago

        how many farmers do you know? You understand many are black and you’re calling them welfare queens, right? I get that people think farmers are republicans or conservative but that’s just admitting you have outdated knowledge. The times have changed

    • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net
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      8 days ago

      While you aren’t wrong about them being good to use in Ag, the scenario where you can do both is more limited.

      You can’t drive a combine harvester under panels, to harvest the crop you just protected for instance, unless you place and design your panels carefully. It’s ok for pasture in that sheep and the like can get in and chow down and it provides shade though.

      For a parking lot, it’s easier, as shown, but also fuck cars, they’re their own environmental disaster

      They are using them on closed tailings facilities (mining) to add additional land use or gain benefit where there wasn’t really a good land use to begin with.

      I think urban settings are where panels will ultimately shine, as you can concentrate them without taking up other land uses - it’s just an add on and doesn’t detract from existing or future uses like using them in an ag field would.

      • hobovision@mander.xyz
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        8 days ago

        40% of US cornfields are used for energy today. If these fields were turned into solar farms with natural meadows under them, not only would we actually recover more energy per acre than corn ethanol, but we would start restoring the American prairie that has been nearly erased from the continent.

        It uses far less materials to build arrays in a field than over a parking lot. The panels don’t need to be mounted as high. There doesn’t need to be as much safety margin and protection of the panels because people won’t be underneath them.

        The bigger problem is getting the power from solar farms to where it is needed, but this is also not as big a problem as anti-electrification lobby wants you to believe.