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Putting solar panels in grazing fields is good for sheep
- Fiahil 4y agoLet's try that with goats :)
- coding123 4y agoPut the wiring in PVC pipe, and make sure the panel's junction box wires are secured tightly inside the inner folds (or use products that secure them).
- ortusdux 4y agoWhile goats will eat just about anything, I think they were referencing their compulsive need to climb everything in their pen.
- martin_a 4y ago> 'Cause baby, there ain't no mountain high enough > Ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough > To keep me from getting to you, baby -- Goats
- dhosek 4y agoI read something somewhere (the curse of wide reading) that it’s a myth that goats will eat anything which came as a shock to me because as a child in the 70s I learned (from adults or books or cartoons or who knows what?) that a goat would eat a tin can given the opportunity.
- h2odragon 4y agoGoats nibble everything, but thats just like us feeling things with our hands. they've only got teeth on the lower jaw in front; they can tear stuff up with their back teeth but they have to get it in their mouths. They tend to have this thing about strings and string-like things, they start swallowing and do not want to stop. instinct tells them vines must have good stuff just a little further along. loose wires are bad for goats and vice versa
- seydor 4y agoI mean it's free cleaning
- sbradford26 4y agoI lived out in the country and our neighbor down the road got several goats. Every day I would drive past and he would have 3 goats on top of his Subaru outback. He built a new barn to park the car in because he got tired of the dents.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoYou know they're going to eat the PVC pipe.
- epistasis 4y ago> While sheep are considered the gold star for solar because they don’t jump on panels, goats have long been used for utility and pipeline maintenance and perimeter maintenance (or maintaining vegetation around the borders of a site) in countries like France. From a 2020 article on the topic. Sorry goats, you are not the "gold standard" here. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/sheep-ag-and-sun-agrivoltaics-propel-significant-reductions-in-solar-main/581879/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/sheep-ag-and-sun-agrivoltai...
- JauntyHatAngle 4y agoAlso it lets the sheep charge their phones.
- exq 4y agoDo you think those sheep would dream of electric androids?
- beembeem 4y agoLove this! Is there a non-paywall link?
- rripken 4y agohttps://archive.ph/YwBBB https://archive.ph/YwBBB
- cschneid 4y agoSomething that's interesting is that most of our agricultural crops are bred for full sun (ie, a big flat field). I wonder if there's room for new partial-shade versions of crops, so they work better alongside solar panels. I doubt they'd be as productive in an absolute sense (less light = less total energy), but adding on solar panels value to the output of that land would likely be better than single-use of either.
- danohuiginn 4y agoThe problem is, how do you navigate a tractor around the panels? Animals are a much better fit in that regard
- beembeem 4y agoyou either go up (expensive) or wide (less economical, lower energy yield)
- epistasis 4y agoBuy appropriately sized tractors. Typically farmers are upgrading these things all the time, should be pretty straightforward to swap out this single factor of production to the right sort of thing. Our vehicles and machinery have this tendency to occupy prime mental real estate, as unchangeable monoliths around which everything must be planned. In reality, they are the most changable thing, and we must change our machinery to serve us, rather than the other way around. There are also lots of crops that are not serviced by large tractors, but individual human hands. In fact most of the fruit and vegetables we eat are like that, and many of those crops do very well with a bit less than full Sun.
- lstodd 4y ago[flagged]
- chucksta 4y agoI think the crop or the plants would have to change a lot. Currently it's pretty easy to see which areas get full sun and which don't when you drive by a corn field in growing season. Looks like its being tested though https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/food-and-farms/can-agriculture-and-solar-farms-co-exist-it-depends https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/food-and-farms/can-agri...
- eyear 4y agoThis is already practiced in some parts in China. https://youtu.be/Azj3OrEtkP4 https://youtu.be/Azj3OrEtkP4
- toomuchtodo 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics
- dcuthbertson 4y agoAh, to dream of electric sheep.
- del82 4y ago(I can't read the full article due to the paywall, but) another framing of this is: farmers can supplement their income by renting out their sheep to help solar farms manage the vegetation around the panels: https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/2020/07/solar-grazing-livestock-as-landscapers-at-utility-scale-solar-arrays/ https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/2020/07/solar-grazing-livesto...
- bilsbie 4y agoThis is great example of having your cake and eating it too.
- pleb_nz 4y agoShelter is good for all stock. The old timers new this and grew trees down fence lines so animals could have shelter in extremes. When driving past properties with the shelter belts stock are always using them during extremes. Today, farmers are removing the shelter belts all in the name of efficiency because the shelter belts reduce grass growth under them and make it harder to irrigate. But damn the animals, at least they have maximised and and can now fully capitalize.
- colechristensen 4y agoDoes anyone irritate grazing land? Is that common at all?
- anigbrowl 4y agoDo you mean irrigate?
- colechristensen 4y agoYes. I suffer from my iPhone picking the correct word and then changing it after i enter the next one.
- lazide 4y agoDecently common on somewhat marginal land. Usually it’s more common to provide hay and similar supplemental feed though. Also common is post-harvest grazing.
- moremetadata 4y agoI'm assuming you mean irrigate land. Before WW2 in the UK, the countryside was covered with loads and loads of ponds and lakes for livestock to drink from and to keep the water table up. Fields were typically smaller with more hedgerows for wildlife to live in. Droughts were less of a problem back then. It was claimed the Germans Luftwaffe could fly by night on the full moon navigating by the reflection of these bodies of water, so the British govt issued orders to fill in these ponds and lakes to make it harder to fly by night. Consequently the water table on farmland fell causing more drought problems and after WW2 these bodies of water have never been re-established by govt orders. The history of the wild apple is also interesting. The Soviet Union paid people to conserve these, but the breakup of the USSR meant these were no longer looked after. They also displayed a symbiotic relationship with other plants just like livestock has displayed a symbiotic relationship with the land. "Prickly shrubs, such as eglantine and barberry exhibiting symbiotic relationships with wild apples by shielding them from predators were also cut" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus_sieversii#Conservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus_sieversii#Conservation If there were no wild animals, like deer that can feed on the leaves, then the bottom of trees would reach to the floor. The main problem has been trying to feed a growing human population whilst keeping them under control, so ideas sometimes dominate which shouldn't, like we see here with solar cells providing shelter for livestock like sheep.
- krupan 4y ago[flagged]
- ragebol 4y agoShade is good for a sheep. Not getting eaten is even better for a sheep. Raising millions if not billions of sheep, that's bad for the environment. But you knew this already...
- goodcanadian 4y agoIt's complicated. Some places in the world, livestock is grown quite sustainably and are basically neutral climate-wise. Other places, it is an unmitigated ecological disaster (clearing rain forest, for example). Because we produce so much around the world, on average, it is pretty bad. Generally, livestock takes more land than grain crops in order to produce the same calories. However, there is more to nutrition than simple calories, so optimising for calories per hectare is probably not the right answer either. I once saw a report suggesting that you can feed more people with less total impact if you include livestock in the mix because livestock can graze on more marginal land than you can farm crops on. I am not qualified to comment on the veracity of that report. I think, in the end, going vegan for climate change reasons is an extreme and unjustified position. On the other hand, almost everyone can stand to eat less meat than they currently do and would probably be healthier for it (myself, included). If we reduce overall meat consumption, it would definitely be a net win for climate and ecology reasons as we could concentrate on producing more sustainably on average than we currently do.
- danans 4y agoProduction of animals for meat and dairy at large scale using crops grown with fossil fuel inputs is bad for climate change, not traditional grazing. Traditional grazing doesn't achieve the scale of industrial agriculture though, so the products are more expensive. You don't have to "go vegan" but reducing animal product consumption in general is an accessible way to minimize your climate change impact.
- beachy 4y agoGoing vegan is one end of a spectrum. You might also change your meat choice. Chicken is far better than pork, which is far better than beef. No need to instantly go cold turkey on meat if it doesn't suit you.