Michelle McBride Casale May 11, 2023
Why would installing solar panels on farmland benefit all of us? We all like to eat but don’t ever think that our food comes from anywhere but the grocery store.
We all use electricity without ever thinking about it: from charging our phones, flipping a light switch, or doing laundry. We also never think about from where electricity comes.
It’s just that outlet in your wall, right? Well, farmers work hard dodging rain clouds and droughts to do their best to put food on the grocer’s shelves; and, most electricity is generated from fossils fuels that pollute our environment. So how do we keep farmers in business and generate cleaner energy?
We put them together. Senator Rosemary Brown is proposing legislation to allow solar panels to be placed on farmland, above crops and small livestock. We all want to save the environment with clean energy (since we all love our devices) and farmers need to have a secondary supplemental income to help with the times crops are lost to untimely rain or drought.
Farming is a labor of love and the next generations don’t necessarily have that same love of sweaty labor. It is becoming less financially feasible without the secondary income.
Solar panels can provide that necessary income by being placed above crops to allow the land to have a dual-use: agriculture and solar. Please support legislation to allow community solar.
Without the secondary income of solar, many farms will be sold for developments and warehouses, which means more traffic, more pot holes, more stress on roads, schools, police and fire departments. Community solar can be the help farmers need to continue providing food for us and our animals, while helping keep the air clean to breathe and producing clean energy at the same time.
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