Learned a new word: Agrivoltaics

[ss55]

I learned a new word today: Agrivoltaics. Could it prop up shrinking farm incomes?

 

[Not db4600]

I learned a new word today: Agrivoltaics. Could it prop up shrinking farm incomes?

Can we guess PV is already helping prop up some? I’m not sure it is so clear cut. The PV industry has boomed in the first part century 21. Is there long term gain or burden?

The neighbor north of Junkshow planted a PV garden in 2015. After her husband passed she rents the remaining ground. I speculate there will come a time when current rent would surpass the PV value when the sheeny contract is up and she assumes that burden.

Locally the serious farmer is looking to buy or rent more tillable acres and not plant PV. The acres that have gone PV are typically owned by the estate that has no farming input so do we consider that “farm” or just land?

If I have 80 acres of marginal land and I rent it to citiots for hunting is it farming?

Guess it depends how the accountant spins it.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

It will kick the can down the road, but that's about it. Farmers need to get a handle on production instead of trying to "make it up on volume" year after year.

Yes, you CAN control your output. You know it takes X seed and Y fertilizer to make Z yield in an average year, especially the operations that have the fancy computer mapped fields. Most years are average years. Instead of 250bu corn, fertilize for 200bu. Could you survive on $8 corn with 200bu yields? Probably a whole lot better than $4 corn on 250bu yields. (For the math challenged, 200bu at $8 is $1600/acre, and 250bu at $4 is $1000 an acre. $1600 is bigger than $1000.) If everybody got together and decided to cut production 20% there would be a huge uptick in commodity prices, but that will never happen.

 

[Princeton Bill]

Barnyard Engineering I agree with your thoughts and you are right it will never happen. The NFO tried it in the 60s and it didn't work. Farmers have not changed too much since then.

 

[rrlund]

Barnyard Engineering I agree with your thoughts and you are right it will never happen. The NFO tried it in the 60s and it didn't work. Farmers have not changed too much since then.

That's why I just had to laugh at anybody who thought the oil companies would "drill, drill, drill" if given the chance. They're not stupid. Farmers are the only ones who'll over produce their way right in to the poor house. Smart bunch aren't we?

 

[TN 2N]

The problem is there are too many farmers to successfully collude. Not so with oil companies!

 

[paul]

Sunshine powers plants, and sunshine powers photovoltaic arrays.

I think combining the 2 on the same exact land weakens both.

Obviously any sunshine collected by the panels means less sun for the plants, and so the land is less productive.

Building the panels to farm around them, they need to be spaced farther apart, or taller, or special materials to allow some light to pass through, or built tougher stands to survive animals. This makes them more costly and less productive.

Together we end up using more land to co produce electricity and food, than if we just put panels over here and farm over there both as efficiently as we can.

These sorts of ideas make wonderful talking points and everyone in a meeting can smile and congadulate themselves on such fine ideas and thinking. And the general public gets this idea in their head and never hears of it again but ‘remembers’ that solar panels over corn fields is making farmers twice as much money as they were making before.

But in the end they are mostly generally terrible ideas that cost money and efficiency and do not work in the real world.

Clearly solar panels fit best over areas that are already concrete and tar, such as city structures. Solar panels also fit best in very dry arid places with lots of sun and few clouds, like deserts where agriculture is difficult.

Farming is best done in open areas.

Certainly there can be some sorts of small critter grazing around special built panels that can keep the weeds down and make some use of the land the panels are on. But that is not wonderfully productive, it is a small thing that works in some places for a small gain, but it is getting a small food return from what used to be a really good farmland. I don’t consider that any sort of win for agriculture.

Either produce electricity, or produce crops on an acre. Think it through, you need to be efficient to make either enterprise work.

My opinion.

Paul

 

[paul]

Barnyard Engineering I agree with your thoughts and you are right it will never happen. The NFO tried it in the 60s and it didn't work. Farmers have not changed too much since then.

Grain trade is a global deal.

USA exports about 50% the soybeans, 20% of the corn, and 45% of the wheat produced.

We really can’t control the price we get for our crops. We depend on the price set by the world markets.

Sometimes we are above world market prices, sometimes below in our country. But these prices will -always- average back to the world price.

If we somehow were able to price fix and add 20% to all grain prices. Other countries would grow more because they also would be getting more income as they also get higher prices. Over 3-4 years, the prices would return to whatever the world average would be at that time.

We can’t live in a vacuum. We are part of the global trade of grains. Prices go up and prices go down based on demand and production around the globe. We are foolish if we think we can change the prices artificially for more than a year or two, when the rest of the world would adjust and return prices to ‘normal.’

What we farmers can control is cost of production. Pay less for land - buying or renting. Pay less for fertilizer. Pay less for iron and technology. That’s really the only thing in our control.

More people want to farm than there is space to farm in the USA. On top of that technology is decreasing the number of farmers needed to farm. This is what is driving up the cost of farming, for now.

Price fixing bulk commodity grains will never ever work long term. It would be a disaster for this country. Having NFO members sitting at county cross roads with shotguns was a very bad thing, nothing productive would ever come of that then or now.

Paul

 

[ss55]

The problem is there are too many farmers to successfully collude. Not so with oil companies!

Is the US Grain trade still dominated by the Seven Sisters?

Here's a more detailed look at some of the key companies:

• Archer Daniels Midland (ADM):
  A global leader in agricultural processing and commodity trading, ADM is involved in grain processing and oilseed crushing.
  

• Cargill:
  An international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial, and industrial products, Cargill is a major player in grain and oilseeds.
  
  
• Bunge Limited:
  A global agribusiness and food company, Bunge is one of the largest players in the grain trade and is part of the "ABCD" group.
  
  
• CHS, Inc.:
  A diversified global agribusiness cooperative owned by farmers, CHS has a significant role in the US grain market.
  
  
• Louis Dreyfus Company:
  Another "ABCD" trader, Louis Dreyfus is a major global merchant of agricultural goods and a large wheat exporter.
  
  
• Gavilon Group:
  This company, owned by Continental Grain, is a major participant in the US grain and energy markets and a significant exporter of wheat.
  
  
• The Andersons, Inc.:
  A diversified company with operations in grain, ethanol, and plant nutrient, The Andersons is a major US grain trader.
  

 

[john in la]

It will kick the can down the road, but that's about it. Farmers need to get a handle on production instead of trying to "make it up on volume" year after year.

Yes, you CAN control your output. You know it takes X seed and Y fertilizer to make Z yield in an average year, especially the operations that have the fancy computer mapped fields. Most years are average years. Instead of 250bu corn, fertilize for 200bu. Could you survive on $8 corn with 200bu yields? Probably a whole lot better than $4 corn on 250bu yields. (For the math challenged, 200bu at $8 is $1600/acre, and 250bu at $4 is $1000 an acre. $1600 is bigger than $1000.) If everybody got together and decided to cut production 20% there would be a huge uptick in commodity prices, but that will never happen.

That would never work as you will have that one guy that would want you to shoot for 150 bu so he can get $8 for his 250 bu.

 

[john in la]

When we go to total electric cars farmers will be in worse shape than the oil companies.
You can run an electric plant on natural gas but I have yet to see an electric power plant run on ethanol.

 

[Tony in SD]

When we go to total electric cars farmers will be in worse shape than the oil companies.
You can run an electric plant on natural gas but I have yet to see an electric power plant run on ethanol.

With all due respect, just because you haven’t seen them doesn’t mean the dont exist.

Ethanol Producer Magazine

Since 1995, Ethanol Producer Magazine is the ethanol industry’s premier trade journal. With its commitment to editorial excellence and high-quality print production and distribution, it is widely recognized as the business-to-business publication of note throughout the global ethanol industry...

ethanolproducer.com

 

[john in la]

With all due respect, just because you haven’t seen them doesn’t mean the dont exist.

Ethanol Producer Magazine

Since 1995, Ethanol Producer Magazine is the ethanol industry’s premier trade journal. With its commitment to editorial excellence and high-quality print production and distribution, it is widely recognized as the business-to-business publication of note throughout the global ethanol industry...

ethanolproducer.com

That looks like a list of places that make ethanol.
While Brazil is experimenting with the idea I don’t know of one electric producer in the USA that uses ethanol to run a power grid.
Nuclear coal natural gas yes but not ethanol.

But I’m always ready to get educated.

 

[Tramway Guy]

Just yesterday on CBS evening news was a story on a guy who rents out herds of sheep to graze in solar farms. He did really well.

 

[ss55]

When we go to total electric cars farmers will be in worse shape than the oil companies.
You can run an electric plant on natural gas but I have yet to see an electric power plant run on ethanol.

Cost might be a major barrier to burning ethanol to produce electricity. Solar panels and wind turbines might produce electricity for less cost than burning ethanol.