Dave Duttlinger's first thought when he saw a dense band of yellowish-brown dust smearing the sky above his Indiana farm was: I warned them this would happen.
About 445 acres of his fields near Wheatfield, Indiana, are covered in solar panels and related machinery – land that in April 2019 Duttlinger leased to Dunns Bridge Solar LLC, for one of the largest solar developments in the Midwest.
On that blustery spring afternoon in 2022, Duttlinger said, his phone rang with questions from frustrated neighbors: Why is dust from your farm inside my truck? Inside my house? Who should I call to clean it up?
According to Duttlinger's solar lease, reviewed by Reuters, Dunns Bridge said it would use "commercially reasonable efforts to minimize any damage to and disturbance of growing crops and crop land caused by its construction activities" outside the project site and "not remove topsoil" from the property itself. Still, sub-contractors graded Duttlinger's fields to assist the building of roads and installation of posts and panels, he said, despite his warnings that it could make the land more vulnerable to erosion.
"I'll never be able to grow anything on that field again," the farmer said. About one-third of his approximately 1,200-acre farm – where his family grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa for cattle – has been leased.
“I’ll never be able to grow anything on that field again,” the farmer said. About one-third of his approximately 1,200-acre farm – where his family grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa for cattle – has been leased.
Got bad news for you, dude. You are making your field unfarmable.
That has nothing to do with solar farms, that has to do with farmers in America not giving a shit about doing things sustainably.
How many acres of this guy's farm do you think he lets lie fallow? Enough to replenish the soil? Or does he try to maximize his harvest every year by using as much of his land as possible?
Solar panels can work in tandem with farming. In Germany a farmers raised them up and spaced them and grew shade loving crops below. Cattle farmers can put them in the roofs of the rows of loafing sheds. They give fields that are too rocky, or are in a climate that does not grow crops well, a viable means of production.
What a crap, gotcha headline. There's dust from construction...much like there's dust following harvest or when planting. There's land that is leased too, but that does not preclude future crop growth on the region
Meanwhile in SW Minnesota, my family is using leased solar panels from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (mpuc) as part of their crop rotations.
One year, a field gets solar panels, then next year they are moved to an adjacent field and crops replanted where the previous panels sat. They also do soil prep on the field with the panels so it'll be nutrient rich when they're moved again.
It's not rocket science to either rotate them or to plant under them, this story is idiotic.
the guy in that article is a moron, but solar has the potential to be more profitable than farming - it's immune to drought and equally immune to subsidies.
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