{"id":17749,"date":"2012-01-03T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T02:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/?p=17749"},"modified":"2018-02-01T23:55:44","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T23:55:44","slug":"can-solar-and-farming-make-good-neighbors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/03\/can-solar-and-farming-make-good-neighbors\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Hay While the Sun Shines: A Flap over Solar Panels in Farm Country"},"content":{"rendered":"

The same things that make the San Joaquin Valley ideal for growing crops, plenty of sun and land, is also attracting large-scale solar power developers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hear the companion radio feature Wednesday morning, on <\/em>The California Report<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Tom Barcellos and his yellow lab, Maddox. Barcellos hopes to plant rows of pomegranate trees next to rows of solar panels, in an experiment to see if the shade from solar panels actually benefits crops.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Farmer Aaron Barcellos bristles at the idea that putting solar panels on his land is \u201cpaving it over,\u201d as some critics have contended. Harvesting electrons, he says, is not the same as pouring concrete to build houses or a shopping center. Solar isn\u2019t permanent: he can simply pull out the posts holding up the panels when he wants to plow the land under again. In the meantime, using a small part of his farm to generate power for the grid is a good way to bring in some guaranteed income, helping him weather the ups and downs of drought and crop prices.<\/p>\n

But on Barcellos\u2019s farm, the ground closest to a PG&E substation is considered \u201cprime\u201d farmland. That means he has to get permission from county supervisors to take his land out of the Williamson Act<\/a>, which gives farmers a tax break for keeping prime farmland in agriculture. I explore that controversy in my radio story<\/a> on today\u2019s California Report<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A new joint report from UC Berkeley and UCLA<\/a> (a big pdf) estimates that California could need 100,000 acres of land to meet its renewable energy targets by 2030. But it warns that the state needs to define which land is optimal for solar development, or else it risks losing prime farmland.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A new kind of harvest: workers install more than 16 thousand posts that will hold up solar panels on this PG&E-owned solar farm in Western Fresno County. This field used to grow tomatoes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s exactly the fear of the California Farm Bureau. It\u2019s suing Fresno County<\/a> over its decision to allow a solar development on land protected by the Williamson Act. The fight places the Farm Bureau, usually a fierce defender of property rights, in the odd position of squaring off against willing property owners over what they should be able to do with their land.<\/p>\n

Fresno County Farm Bureau President Ryan Jacobson says the sheer magnitude of the 30-or-so projects proposed for Fresno County is a threat to the nation\u2019s most productive farm county. (Check out a recent map of proposed solar projects<\/a> in the county.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason Fresno County is the number-one agricultural county in the world is because of our large tracts of uninterrupted land,\u201d says Jacobsen.\u00a0 “We\u2019re concerned about these industrial uses breaking that up. [Farming] is one of the very few bright spots in our economy right now and unfortunately, we\u2019re paving it over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacobsen also warns solar panels don\u2019t necessarily make good neighbors in farm country. Bees that pollinate orchards can gum up the surface with sticky pollen. Layers of dust from neighboring farms can settle on panels, reducing their output.<\/p>\n

But Barcellos says he\u2019s not concerned.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re fourth generation farmers,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I thought this was something that wasn\u2019t compatible with farming, my family just wouldn\u2019t be interested in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Barcellos wants to see if the shade from solar panels can actually benefit crops like pomegranates.” credit=”Courtesy of SolarGen USA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In fact, he\u2019s one of the first farmers planning to experiment with planting crops next to solar panels \u2013 using the shade to protect his delicate pomegranates from sunburn. \u201cThe plan is to have two rows of pomegranate trees between two rows of panels. They\u2019d get sunlight 55 percent of the time, and be shaded the rest of the day,\u201d explains Barcellos. It\u2019s an experiment researchers at San Diego State plan to follow closely, to see if it can be duplicated elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Farmland conservation advocates say they\u2019re not against renewable energy. Their ideal solution would be to put solar on less productive farmland. But that doesn\u2019t always work logistically, especially if that land is far from transmission lines. The UCLA\/UC Berkeley study recommends upgrading electricity infrastructure to make it easier for more remote, less productive fields to connect to the grid.<\/p>\n

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post identified Aaron Barcellos as “Tom Barcellos.” We apologize for the confusion — especially to Tom Barcellos, who alerted us to the discrepancy.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The same things that make the San Joaquin Valley ideal for growing crops, plenty of sun and land, also attract large-scale solar power developers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17,530],"coauthors":[],"series":[],"affiliates":[],"programs":[],"collections":[],"interests":[],"class_list":["post-17749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-power","tag-agriculture","tag-solar"],"acf":{"template_type":"standard","featured_image_type":"standard","is_audio_post":false},"yoast_head":"\nMaking Hay While the Sun Shines: A Flap over Solar Panels in Farm Country | Climate Watch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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