[dralley]

The logistics of trying to plant, maintain and harvest crops underneath a bunch of solar panels while also needing to deal with the subsequent issues of uneven runoff of water from rain make it seem impractical. Just cover parking lots, malls and supermarkets with them, we have plenty of those, and they're closer to where the electricity is needed than agricultural land.

[mbgerring]

Regardless of your opinion on this subject, agrivoltaics projects are being installed today at an increasing rate, and they’re going well, from what I’ve read. It’s not some theoretical proposal, it’s happening now. It’s likely that solar panels will be installed both in parking lots and over farmland.

[angiosperm]

You can make up whatever you like, saying "seems". Facts are better.

The fact is that agrivoltaics has been very successful, for reasons you probably would not guess in a wholesale void of facts. Looking up the facts, you could actually learn something.

[gridspy]

We absolutely should cover those, but there is a lot of farmland. There may not be enough "mall-land"

[sandworm101]

Well, when i see solar panels atop every mall and commercial building, when every home has a solar roof, then i'll entertain chopping down wilderness or sacrificing farmland to the cause. I still see plent of bare rooftop to address first.

[_aavaa_]

The home roofs are going to be done off the more expensive solar installations ($/kW) that we can build because they’re so small.

It’s also fascinating how quickly the Nirvana fallacy shows up when it’s time to talk about renewables. Supposedly chopping down forests for solar (which isn’t the main way of getting land) or the farmers choosing to put something on their land is top of mind. But chop those forests to make something else, or have the farmers grow super subsidized corn and there isn’t a peep.

[angiosperm]

Literally nobody proposes "sacrificing" farmland.

[jubjubbird]

I'm looking at a legal agreement on my desk to lease 120 acres of productive eastern Nebraska farmland to build a commercial scale solar project. The land would be taken out of production ("sacrificed") for the 50 year lease, with payments about twice what the land leases for for agriculture (soybeans).

[sandworm101]

It is very common. Farming is hard, margins slim at best. And farmers are given great leeway in how they may make money from land. Regulation is lax. Many fields have been turned from the production of food to the production of electricity, while countless factory rooftops sit covered only in tar and asphalt.

[adrianN]

As soon as we stop using farmland to grow energy crops when the same area could give us 20x the energy using solar panels.

[verve_rat]

Well good job it's not your decision to make then.

If the economic benefits of adding solar to their farm outweighs the costs then farmers will start adding them to farms.