Solar Energy Is Ruining Farms
What is good for the environment can also be bad. According to a new analysis, huge solar installations on farmland can cause winds to tear off topsoil and spread it miles away, making the land useless for crop planting.
Wind Energy –A Huge Financial Failure?
According to Reuters, “A renewable energy boom risks damaging some of America’s richest soils in key farming states like Indiana, according to a Reuters analysis of federal, state and local data; hundreds of pages of court records; and interviews with more than 100 energy and soil scientists, agricultural economists, farmers and farmland owners, and local, state and federal lawmakers.” Solar energy needs what the analysis calls “wide open fields.”
Another reason farms are at risk is the economic impact of solar energy on farmers. Solar leases can bring in revenue of as much as $1,500 an acre, while crop yields are closer to $250 in states like Indiana and Iowa.
Solar Fields Takeover Crop Fields
Nowhere close to all the land in any state will be turned over to solar. However, the amount of money involved in a state like Iowa is about $25 billion in annual agricultural yield. Just as important, the state’s production of produce and dairy is massive.
It was hard to forecast what the dawn and growth of renewables would do to the balance of the environment. A great deal of it is bad.
