Growing Crops under Solar Panels
Agrivoltaics Do Double Duty
Once one hears the idea, it seems obvious. But until seeing this recent article from BBC Future (excerpted below), I had never heard of agrivoltaics. Yes, I knew that sometimes crops were planted under solar panels. But I did not know that it had become systematic enough to be a significant new opportunity for farmers.
Where arable land is scarce or expensive, solar power is often seen as competitive with agriculture. But agrivoltaic experiments have shown that with good planning, crop yields can be increased or crops planted in a wider range of environments.
The article excerpted below from the BBC Future Planet series is about a farmer in Italy. But the implications are relevant worldwide. The US Department of Agriculture has launched a Northeast Climate Hub featuring a blueberry farm in Maine. And in 2020 the Mali-Folkecenter Nyetaa, together with the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Japan, hosted a series of webinars pointing out the great potential for this technology.
The first such ventures in Africa were launched in 2022, in North Africa and in Kenya.
The pilot project in Kenya is located at the Latia Agripreneurship Institute (LAI) in Kajiado, Kenya, 77 km (48 miles) south of Nairobi. It was featured in a 3-minute video in 2022.
The Italian farmers saving an ancient fruit with solar power
(Image credit: Agostino Petroni)
By Agostino Petroni, 24th April 2023
n a warm late winter morning, Antonio Lancellotta, a 35-year-old farmer, shows me around one of his family's unorthodox 1.8-acre (7,280 square metre) greenhouse in Scalea, southern Italy. Rows of lush citron trees (Citrus medica), heavy with white flowers fill the space. Yet, above the trees, at about 12.5ft (3.8m) above the ground, alternating lines of transparent plastic sheets and photovoltaic panels roofed the field. The Lancellotta family was one of the first in Italy to experiment with "agrivoltaics", where crops are grown underneath solar panels.
"Look at the quality of this citron," Lancellotta says, holding a large heart-shaped yellow fruit. "Perfect."
Over the centuries, thanks to a mild climate, locals in this corner of Italy specialised in growing these large Liscia Diamante (which translates to "smooth diamond") fruits – which can weigh up to 11lb (5kg) each – to meet the demand of perfume makers who used the rind's essential oils. Jewish priests traveled from far away to select the fruits for use in prayer during the seven-day religious festival Sukkot. Every family had a few citron trees: the area prospered and took on the name of Riviera dei Cedri.
However, in the last 50 years, the Liscia Diamante almost went extinct as Calabrians migrated elsewhere searching for a better life, and cheaper industrial substitutes replaced essential oils. It made little economic sense for those who stayed behind to keep growing the fruit.
His idea was in line with a larger trend. That same year, the European Union issued a directive to its member states to ensure 20% of their energy was from renewable sources by 2020, leading to a race to set up solar farms. Some farmers preferred to sell or rent their land to renewable energy production companies long-term because of the more secure income. While the European Union has now surpassed the 20% goal, globally the figure for solar is still low. According to a 2021 report by the International Energy Agency, photovoltaic energy production accounts for only 3.6% of global electricity generation, though it is growing fast.
According to Sylvia Kay, a British researcher at the non-profit research and advocacy think tank the Transnational Institute, the quest for renewable energy production in the past decade triggered a trend to reallocate land used for crop cultivation for renewable energy production.
"It set up sort of competing land uses," Kay says. In partnership with Via Campesina, an International farmers' organisation, she compiled a report on European land concentration and "green grabbing", the displacement of farmland for renewable energy production.
In many parts of the world, the development of large solar projects on agricultural land has sidelined local communities, who see few benefits from the project and face unemployment as local agricultural jobs disappear. In recent years, the tension between agricultural and solar land has been felt in the US, India and China, among other solar producers.
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I have been reading a lot about solar energy and the use of the surrounding land Most has been about letting it return to a wild state ( also a plus, instead of mono crops and fertilizer, pesticides etc) Nice to know there are even better alternatives It has to happen Downside is the lithium But better than coal, oil, etc