Two Minnesota solar farms planted native grasses and wildflowers beneath their panels. Five years later, flowering plant species had increased sevenfold, native bee numbers more than 20 fold and total insect numbers had tripled, while more bees were also visiting nearby soybean fields.

[u/ArgentineBeauty]

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/two-minnesota-solar-farms-turned-the-ground-beneath-their-panels-into-habitat-and-native-bee-abundance-rose-more-than-20-fold/36680/

[u/MrEHam]

Solar panels above canals also reduces water evaporation.

One major upgrade I’d like to see is shade covering solar panels above sidewalks and bike paths, especially in the warm south or rainy areas.

It will encourage more people to walk or ride bikes and the benefits are huge. Less fossil fuels used, less money spent on gas and car expenses, more exercise, lower traffic for the remaining drivers, and the clean energy generation.

[u/dsac → u/MrEHam]

There are hundreds (thousands?) of acres of shadeless parking lots at stadiums, arenas, schools, and government buildings that would be perfect for this

[u/Evadrepus → u/dsac]

A few studies have shown that we could take most of the corn produced by Illinois and used in ethanol production and turn those same lands into solar farms and have enough energy to power the nation's power grid. Without all the water and energy used in producing a pollutant.

[u/Candle1ight → u/Evadrepus]

Isn't the overproduction of corn intentional and part of some military surplus strategy? It's turned into ethanol as a bonus, not a goal.

[u/nubileiguana → u/Candle1ight]

Not exactly. Corn subsidies have been around for a long time. The government treats Corn as a security crop, or at least that's how it started. Ethanol's not so much a bonus as it is a very, very inefficient justification for the subsidies.

The goal is to keep people planting corn because if something Bad happens, the country would need a lot of sustainable food. So we subsidize corn production to make sure of that.

The problem is that we subsidize it so well that other crops aren't as profitable, which means more farms go all in on corn, which means a higher reliance on the subsidies, which means reinforcing the subsidies, which means other crops aren't as profitable and so on.

We could stop the subsidies and use the money instead to lease farmer's land for solar farms or really anything else. Cheaper for the government, better for the environment, and good for the farmer even though they wouldn't have a farm any more.

But, the price of corn would go up which would destabilize a significant portion of the American diet. Almost everything on the shelves has some form of corn in it and grocery bills would creep up. All meat, for example, would raise in price as ranchers have to pay more for feed.

It's similar to the health insurance problem where we've built a terribly inefficient system and we're too afraid of the sunk cost to fix it.

[u/mpyne → u/Candle1ight]

No (after all if it were a thing we'd be using it now in response to the Middle East supply chain crunches). But that is how corn farmers tried to sell their brand of taxpayer subsidy so they could plant way morn corn than we can use.

[u/Jaikarr → u/mpyne]

What? The point of subsidies is to ensure if there was a food shortage the country had the infrastructure to combat it. It's got nothing to do with the energy crisis caused by turmoil in the Middle-east

[u/mpyne → u/Jaikarr]

No, part of them is to over-produce corn for the production of corn-based ethanols which are used in E85 gasoline to this very day. Partially justified as a means of providing energy security, including for the military.

Of course now the U.S. is the #1 oil producer in the world again, so there's much less of a need for it, assuming there was ever a need in the first place.

It would actually be better for energy security to simply "plant" solar panels in those same fields rather than corn intended for use in augmenting gasoline.

[u/Jaikarr → u/mpyne]

You're talking about energy security, I'm pointing out that it's about food security. Two very different vital resources. Just because the corn is used for energy rather than food doesn't change the fact that it could be used to grow food if needed.

You don't need to cover food-producing land with solar panels when there's plenty of land that can't produce food to put them.

[u/wrenwood2018 → u/Evadrepus]

Taking away the most productive farmland is a bad trade relative to parking lots and other industrial options.

[u/ThePublikon → u/wrenwood2018]

Not if the farmland is only being used for inefficient energy production and a more efficient type of energy production is available.

That's even without considering what this post is about, that crops can be grown or animals raised under the panels.

[u/cantadmittoposting → u/ThePublikon]

the bigger point is we might need that farmland at some point. We already have millions of acres of un-arable land (over parking lots, etc, especially) that can be used for the same purpose, without deleting a potentially important resource for the future.

I mean, there's just straight up desert that gets tons of sun and if we're talking about mass coverage anyways, is less "useful" than illinois farmland.

[u/ThePublikon → u/cantadmittoposting]

I don't think you're getting it, the study was to show how inefficient current use is. Installing solar panels does not "delete" the resource, it multiplies it. You get more energy and more food.

This is all theoretical anyway really, the elephant in the room in transmission losses and redundancy/disaster resilience (i.e. you can't power the nation's grid from a single location because the losses from the resistance of transmission wires are too high and it puts the whole country in the dark if a natural disaster strikes the area.)

[u/ggsimsarah333 → u/cantadmittoposting]

Most of our cropland is actually used to make feed for livestock. It’s very inefficient (look of the energy efficiency rule). If we stopped eating meat we’d free up a ton of land for growing plants for humans to eat. Go vegan! 🌱💚

[u/boomnachos → u/wrenwood2018]

Alright, well let’s target the bottom 10% then.

[u/Vaeon → u/wrenwood2018]

Taking away the most productive farmland is a bad trade relative to parking lots and other industrial options.

You're not going to believe this... but they have discovered that you can place the solar panels 9 feet (3 m) off the ground... and still grow crops under them.