California is also largely desert itself. Such farming is only possible through unsustainable levels of irrigation.
You don't completely cover the land in solar panels - you work with the idea that the sun (and resulting shadows from the panels) moves throughout the day, so space them out a bit, and mount them high enough to stay out of the way of the agricultural activity.
I first saw this going on in southern Germany. The cattle were all in the shaded areas, eating the grass that was growing better than in neighboring uncovered fields - this year was really dry here until a few weeks ago.
Solar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels (2022) https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-graz...
Confirmed multiple times since in several parts of rural Australia.
cprayingmantis•6mo ago
I see it happen all too often, farmer dies, kids don’t want to do anything with the land so it sits growing up becoming unusable. The rate at which farmers are either retiring or passing away far exceeds the rate at which agricultural land is being converted to solar farms. For many farmers, this transition has become a valuable secondary source of income and allowed them to continue or expand their operations.
0cf8612b2e1e•6mo ago
rapjr9•6mo ago
AngryData•6mo ago
Real thick top soil isn't really the natural state of land in most places, a large bulk of it was grown by the people farming it who spent multiple generations fertilizing it, maintaining it, and putting as much organic waste as they could back into it. It is its own ecosystem that was grown just as the crops above it are grown in higher than natural abundance. In most places it takes 80+ years to build up a significant top soil layer, and in the short term letting the land sit fallow for a bit of time will let some nutrients build up in the soil and will provide larger yields in following years. But if you let it go truly wild, the wild stuff starts growing and is also going to start consuming those nutrients until some sort of balance is achieved between top soil and plants above it. And the natural balance in most places only going to be a few inches of good top soil, not the 1-2 foot of topsoil that maximizes crop yields.
As to over utilizing it, you can both maintain that top soil and get higher yields from it, but if you are willing to push the land a little further and add a little more crop density or not fallow or fertilize the land quite as often, you can push the yields a little higher still. Like pulling a bit of the capital out of your investment account along with the interest payments. You can do that for 10 years, and have more to spend/yield for it, but each time you are spending capital/top soil and reducing yield for following years. Then 10 years in, your interest/yield expectations are lower than ever, so if you want to maintain even the old non-exploitive yield numbers you have to take out even more of it. 10 years again and now you are back to a shitty few inches of top soil. Oh sure, you can try growing it again, but just like capital the less you have to start with the longer it will take to grow, and it took others over an entire lifetime to grow what you spend in just 20 years.
Family farmers didn't usually do that because it would just be fucking over your own kids. But in this modern age, how many farms are actually being passed on to kids? How many people give a shit if the land is dead in 20 years if their plan was to sell out of it at that point? Or if they killed off other local farms by out competing with unsustainable practices that the others refused to emulate, why not buy their good land and run the scam over again? By time any of the shortsightedness of those actions culminates they will either be old and rich with investments into other industries, or dead, and the people who will ultimately suffer for it will just be poor strangers they never cared about and the cause of their plights easily deflected onto other sources.
burnt-resistor•6mo ago
poulsbohemian•6mo ago
Often they've moved away to The Big City and don't have any connection or the skills, and often too there just isn't a meaningful return in the crop to justify the lifestyle change or added responsibilities of management.
>>For many farmers, this transition has become a valuable secondary source of income and allowed them to continue or expand their operations.
I think every American should read the book The Crazies by Amy Gamerman that was just published, that talks about this issue. Illustrates a lot of what's really going on in our country.