Choice: food or solar fields

[MossRoad]

This is close to being reality for my area. Just over the border in NY there is a large swath of available farm land in the solar panel program. The town is pushing hard because they want the tax dollars. Broke down like this $4000 to be in the program, IF they build $800/acre/year. I also am at risk of losing a field. A 50 acre chunk of hay ground that I rent. I also live in NWPA where we are happy WHEN the sun shines. All NY is waiting is a few pen strokes. What I have heard is substations are planned and ready to go. The issue is these companies just want an easy build. Large plots of ground they can destroy and guess what large plots are utilized for.........lots of ag production. To address the farmer has a right to do what they want is correct IF they own the land. The issue is these farm (my area) only own so much and rent a large portion of their ground so they don't have control and it can severely impact their operations if the landowner of ground they rent turn it into a solar panel waste land.


The rumor is once the panels go in this becomes sheep country.

That's true. If you don't own that land, you have no control over it. That's a known factor going into the deal. Same as renting a house or apartment; you might not have a place to live next year. No one expects it, but if the owner sells it, or raises the rent higher than you can afford, you're out. Same thing with hunting and fishing lands. One owner will allow you, the next may not.

About the only thing you can do to control it is to purchase the land yourself. And, that's more often than not, very hard or fiscally impossible to do. You're at the mercy of the owner.

What I like about the planned solar project west of us is that the land owners are leasing the property to the solar company, not selling it. So they retain it in their family. After X years, the solar company has the option to pull out (literally. they have to remove the equipment if they leave), or renew for more years. So it's a 20-30 year experiment to see if it's viable or not. While the solar installation sits there, the land rests. No tillage means no wind erosion and actually soil building. No fertilizers to runoff as corn and beans did. No water usage from irrigation, so the aquifer replenishes through rainfall. No fossil fuel usage for tilling or harvesting. That's a bunch of expenses the farmer won't incur, plus the time savings. They can just sit there and collect the rent if they want, but I'd guess most farmers can't sit for long, so they'll pick up jobs and collect double income.

We'll see how it goes.

 

[LHF2019]

That's true. If you don't own that land, you have no control over it. That's a known factor going into the deal. Same as renting a house or apartment; you might not have a place to live next year. No one expects it, but if the owner sells it, or raises the rent higher than you can afford, you're out. Same thing with hunting and fishing lands. One owner will allow you, the next may not.

About the only thing you can do to control it is to purchase the land yourself. And, that's more often than not, very hard or fiscally impossible to do. You're at the mercy of the owner.

What I like about the planned solar project west of us is that the land owners are leasing the property to the solar company, not selling it. So they retain it in their family. After X years, the solar company has the option to pull out (literally. they have to remove the equipment if they leave), or renew for more years. So it's a 20-30 year experiment to see if it's viable or not. While the solar installation sits there, the land rests. No tillage means no wind erosion and actually soil building. No fertilizers to runoff as corn and beans did. No water usage from irrigation, so the aquifer replenishes through rainfall. No fossil fuel usage for tilling or harvesting. That's a bunch of expenses the farmer won't incur, plus the time savings. They can just sit there and collect the rent if they want, but I'd guess most farmers can't sit for long, so they'll pick up jobs and collect double income.

We'll see how it goes.

Not sure how to respond to that. But then I guess I would prefer to struggle day to day and provide a food source then get it from a lab where I can’t pronounce the ingredients or they aren’t listed. You also have high hopes they is no environmental damage and the land is useable after the fact.

I will agree “we’ll see how it goes “.

 

[LHF2019]

That's true. If you don't own that land, you have no control over it. That's a known factor going into the deal. Same as renting a house or apartment; you might not have a place to live next year. No one expects it, but if the owner sells it, or raises the rent higher than you can afford, you're out. Same thing with hunting and fishing lands. One owner will allow you, the next may not.

About the only thing you can do to control it is to purchase the land yourself. And, that's more often than not, very hard or fiscally impossible to do. You're at the mercy of the owner.

What I like about the planned solar project west of us is that the land owners are leasing the property to the solar company, not selling it. So they retain it in their family. After X years, the solar company has the option to pull out (literally. they have to remove the equipment if they leave), or renew for more years. So it's a 20-30 year experiment to see if it's viable or not. While the solar installation sits there, the land rests. No tillage means no wind erosion and actually soil building. No fertilizers to runoff as corn and beans did. No water usage from irrigation, so the aquifer replenishes through rainfall. No fossil fuel usage for tilling or harvesting. That's a bunch of expenses the farmer won't incur, plus the time savings. They can just sit there and collect the rent if they want, but I'd guess most farmers can't sit for long, so they'll pick up jobs and collect double income.

We'll see how it goes.

And your still saying the farmer is collecting ???????????????? How? If the land he rents is rendered unusable, how is he collecting?

Your assuming the farmer is owning the land. I made it clear in my statement that is not always true.

 

[Jstpssng]

The rumor is once the panels go in this becomes sheep country.

Yet the same people who support massive solar structures also would prefer that you eat soy meat... you just can’t win.

 

[MossRoad]

Not sure how to respond to that. But then I guess I would prefer to struggle day to day and provide a food source then get it from a lab where I can’t pronounce the ingredients or they aren’t listed. You also have high hopes they is no environmental damage and the land is useable after the fact.

I will agree “we’ll see how it goes “.

Yeah, I know people that farm rented land need land to rent in the first place. But it has to be in your business plan that someone might yank the rug out from under you at any point, no fault of your own.

We had 10 acres of tillable land on the 20 that we bought back in 1989. A 4 acre field and a 10 acre field. We rented it out for 2 years. It was barely enough to cover the taxes on the land, plus I couldn't use half of my land for 8 months out of the year, as it had corn on it. So I talked with the farmer and asked him if it would put any hurt on him if I asked him not to farm it anymore? He laughed hard. He had 800 acres in the surrounding area. He just did our 10 because it was open land. He'd already bought the seed for that year, so we agreed not to plant it the next year. He was fine with that.

 

[MossRoad]

And your still saying the farmer is collecting ???????????????? How? If the land he rents is rendered unusable, how is he collecting?

Your assuming the farmer is owning the land. I made it clear in my statement that is not always true.

I was speaking of the large solar installation they are planning to our west. It is about 8 families of farmers that own all of the land that they are going to lease to the solar company. They will be collecting rent for 20 years with an option to renew for 10 more after that.

 

[MossRoad]

Yet the same people who support massive solar structures also would prefer that you eat soy meat... you just can’t win.

I doubt that. Most farmers who support these solar and wind farms on their lands are meat eaters.

 

[scaredychicken]

Solar Panels are not very tasty ... might need ketchup

 

[5030]

Not sure how to respond to that.

I do. I own the land here around the farm and I lease ground elsewhere and I own more ground in northern lower Michigan and none of it will ever have solar on it as long as myself or our family owns it. My leased ground is another story, don't control that but keep in mind, as fertile ground is taken pit of production and what was grown on the land no longer is grown, that all adds to the shortage of food and other processed from whatever was grown there.

 

[MossRoad]

Well, you could also say that gravel pits, strip mines, landfills, airports, roads, and parking lots, etc. all took up farm land. Probably exponentially more than solar installations ever will.