You Can't Eat Solar Panels. Or Can You?
“Too bad you can’t eat solar panels.”
What an eye-opener. Excuse me for one minute as I put away my salt and pepper shakers...
Sorry. I know that’s a little more sarcasm than you’re used to seeing in my posts, but I had to, just for a moment, call out the irony.
People who are interested in solar KNOW you can’t eat solar panels.
But do you know what else they know? Let’s talk about it.
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The Truth About Solar
You can’t eat coal. Or oil.
It's true that solar does have an environmental and agricultural impact. However, this “rallying cry” that you “can’t eat” solar attempts to simplify the argument way too much.
Do you know what else you can’t eat?
Field corn and unprocessed soybeans.
This, too, is admittedly a vast oversimplification. Field corn is used for ethanol (obviously, a non-edible “crop”) or livestock feed, along with processed foods like high fructose corn syrup. Soybeans are indigestible unless they are processed (again into livestock feed or ultraprocessed food, or into things like tofu, which accounts for less than 1% of US soy).
To be clear, I am NOT advocating that we need to get rid of these crops, just like I will never argue for a wholescale removal of fossil fuels. They're an important part of our economy and diets, even when they're not eaten "raw." That's not the point.
The point is that we need to pay attention to nuance.
Solar allows for dual-use with agriculture. You cannot farm inside a coal mine.
Everybody panics when we talk about farmland being used for solar or wind, but what we often forget is that, often, the land is not being purchased from the farmer. It is leased. This is not the case in all arrangements, but in many. In this regard, it is not hugely different from farmers receiving mineral rights for oil, gas, or mineral extraction.
Also remember that we dedicate 40% of our corn crop to ethanol. Roughly 29.7 million acres are dedicated to ethanol corn. Not corn for livestock. Not human food. For an inefficient biofuel.
Of the “edible” corn we produce, much is exported (up to one out of every three acres). About half of all soybeans grown in the US are exported.
But studies have shown that solar could generate the same amount of energy as corn ethanol in just 3.2% of the land.
You can’t eat solar panels. But you can eat what’s grown beneath them.
And it’s not just lamb. There are very real farmers (and I invite them to chime in and share this post!) who are growing cattle. Geese. Pumpkins. Broccoli. Hay. And, yes, corn. All under solar and wind.
Does every site lend itself well to agriculture? No. Does every site lend itself well to solar? No.
But just like we need to diversify our diets, we also need to develop a more diverse energy diet. One that’s not one-size-fits-all, but that meets the energy needs of each individual plot of land and each community.
Pass the salt and pepper, please.
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