Struggling Farmers See Bright Spot in Solar

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Print title: "Struggling Farmers Reap Cash From Solar" The article is on page B1 of Tuesday's paper.

Solar panels installed in America’s Farm Belt are taking land out of production but are generating energy revenue https://www.wsj.com/articles/struggling-farmers-see-bright-spot-in-solar-11569242733?shareToken=st683006b645514414984cfb47bddc988b … via @WSJ

Link to tweet

Struggling Farmers See Bright Spot in Solar
Panels take land out of crop production but generate energy revenue. ‘Solar becomes a good way to diversify.’

By Kirk Maltais

https://twitter.com/kirkmaltais
[e-mail]

Updated Sept. 23, 2019 10:52 pm ET

U.S. farmers are embracing an alternative means of turning sunlight into revenue during a sharp downturn in crop prices: solar power.

Solar panels are being installed across the Farm Belt for personal and external use on land where growers are struggling to make ends meet. The tit-for-tat tariffs applied by the U.S. and China to each other’s goods have cut demand for American crops. Futures prices for corn, soybeans and wheat are all trading around their lowest levels since 2010. Making matters worse, record spring rainfall...

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[Wellstone ruled]

1. There are millions of acres

that should never be planted into row crops or even hay.

[Kaleva]

2. I posed this in 2012: "Helping agriculture go green"

"Over the past months I've been reading about solar, bio-gas and geothermal off and on and also about how some farms are installing such. With that, I've been kicking around ideas how the federal govt. could greatly assist farms in going green and how to fund such a national project.

I live in Michigan so almost all my research on agriculture is on this state so I'll use Michigan as an example of what could be possibly done. Most of the numbers I'll be citing is from memory so I could be off. Maybe even way off and it's also possible that some of the articles I read contained inaccurate information so bear with me on that. Michigan ranks 22nd in agriculture output which makes it about average amongst all states and that works out quite well here.

There are about 100 farms in this state that produce enough animal waste where it thus makes economic sense to install a bio-gas electric power plant on site. The approximate cost for a bio-gas plant is about 2.2 million for a total of 220 million.

Dairy farms are energy intensive because of the need to cool the milk and power the milking equipment. There are about 2500 dairy farms in Michigan and the average herd size is 114 cows. The approx. cost to install a solar system that would provide enough electricity for dairy farm with an average size herd is $80,000. The approx. cost to install a geothermal heating cooling system for a home is $30,000 for a total of $110,000 which I'll increase to $125,000 to take into account potential unforeseen expenses.

Hog farms and poultry farms are also electrical energy intensive too. There are a little less then 500 hog farms in the state and I've never been able to find out how many poultry farms there are here but I'll use the figure of 500 for a total of 3500 dairy, hog and poultry farms. Multiplying $125,000 by 3500 gives a cost of $437,500,000.

There are about 56,000 farms in the state. The majority of which are small or part time. Subtracting the number of farms already mentioned gives a total of 52,400. Installing a 5kw solar system and a geothermal heating /cooling system would cost about $75,000 each for a total cost of $3,930,000,000.

Adding it all up comes up with a total cost of $4,587,500,000 just for Michigan. I'll round this up to $5 billion to make my calculations on the back of an envelope easier and to provide a cushion to account for extra costs. If one agrees that Michigan is about average, the total cost for the entire nation would be $250 billion..

That's a great deal of money but the way to pay for it would be to eliminate the home mortgage tax deduction or cap it. The home mortgage deductions costs the federal govt. about $80 billion a year and even if one just capped it so the revenue was $50 billion, that be way more then enough to fund such a project over a ten year period of time as it'd be impossible to accomplish such a task in just a few years. The extra money could go to fund the construction of large scale solar farms in the South West on military bases and Indian reservations and for the construction of high powered transmission lines to transfer that power not just west to California but as far east as Atlanta, Georgia. And I believe there would be enough money left to also fund the construction of desalinization plants in California, Texas and Florida. Agriculture requires a great deal of water and the three states I mentioned are ranked 1, 2 and 10th respectively nationwide in agricultural receipts."

https://www.democraticunderground.com/112729334