r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 4h ago

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.

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/
11.4k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

224 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

150

u/dsac 2h ago

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 1h ago

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 1h ago

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/mpyne 37m ago

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 34m ago

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 23m ago

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 17m ago

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.