Guest column: Sheep and solar panels have a symbiotic relationship
A week after the nation celebrated Independence Day, the Wayne County Commissioners are set to chip away at the rights of independent American farmers to make their own agricultural production plans.
My family wants to graze sheep under solar panels at the new U.S. 30/Apple Creek Road interchange where we've been farming for 60 years — long before the Ohio Department of Transportation cut the federal highway right through us.
It's a plan that we think would make us better stewards of the land while producing more for the homeland and reducing our reliance on China.
With a corn, soybean, and wheat rotation in the fields and hogs in the barn, I am very dependent on China these days.
China buys about half of U.S. soybeans as well as a significant percentage of livestock products.
Then at planting time, I'm dependent on China again. Many of the key fertilizer ingredients for our crop inputs come from China.
Meanwhile, more than half of the lamb consumed in this country today is imported.
And experts predict that the regional energy grid will fall short of electricity based on current power plant retirement and construction trends.
Setting up our land to be triple-use — producing food, fiber, and energy all at once in a symbiotic relationship — seems like the best move we can make for our family, our farm, our community, our country, and our world.
Such a solar grazing field would:
Keep land in food, fiber, and energy production, all at once, in the most efficient way known to man at this time.
Increase the local tax base tremendously without increasing the need for any taxpayer provided services. (My sheep won't go to school!)
Not add any additional traffic or weight to the roads post-construction.
Be quite unlikely to present noise, light, rodent, litter, dust, noxious weeds, or drainage issues for neighbors.
Not bring the disease risk of another confinement barn close to neighboring farmers who already have hogs or chickens in similar barns.
Increase farm employment and purchases from local agricultural suppliers.
Keep the farmland in the same longtime farm family, as land for alternative energy projects is typically leased rather than purchased by developers.
Allow for an easy return to a corn-soybean-wheat rotation at the end of the project as fertility would have been kept up for pasturing and less than 10 percent of the soil would be disturbed.
Make use of some of the newest local research from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and Ohio State's Agricultural Technical Institute and be a very close-by spot to carry out more student and professor research.
Add curb appeal with significant landscaping funds from the developer, which would benefit neighboring businesses, on top of the sight of little lambs peeking through the fence.
Why would the county commissioners try to stand in the way of a solar energy field that would produce millions of dollars over its life for Smithville and Waynedale schools and other public services?
The commissioners fret about whether neighbors who are used to a view of row crops and the smell of hog, chicken, and dairy manure be disturbed by the sight of sheep grazing under solar panels instead. But the developer provides lots of money for landscaping buffers, there's a great greenhouse right across the road which could surely do the job in spades, and baby lambs are among the cutest creatures ever.
Perhaps the commissioners didn't know that sheep and solar panels go hand in hand — as well as the birds and the bees — when they first heard about interest in solar panels locally? Or they didn't know that farmers have always produced energy as well as food and fiber? One-third of the corn grown in Ohio goes to ethanol these days, according to the Ohio Corn & Wheat Growers Association, which tracks such stats. Solar panels are a way more efficient source of power than ethanol. So, building solar grazing fields could actually free up more land for food production, even as food was still being produced in the solar field.
Maybe the commissioners are fearful of something new to them? But the Solar Energy Industries Association estimates there are 370 million solar panels installed in the United States today.
First Solar Inc. has been making panels in northwest Ohio for almost a quarter century. My developer Lightsource bp — bp like the gas stations — is the largest solar developer in Europe. Lightsource often buys panels from First Solar. I had a next-door neighbor who works for First Solar. A solar field built in Wayne County could be a largely Ohio project!
An opposition to subsidies also gets mentioned by the commissioners. But are the tax credits for solar energy projects more or less than the many direct and indirect subsidies for ethanol, for instance? It's hard to compare such different forms of government aid. The federal government handed out almost $189 million to Wayne County farmers producing traditional grains, oilseeds, and livestock between 1995 and 2021, according to the Environmental Working Group. And that figure doesn't begin to account for the indirect subsidies -- such as the requirements that lead to ethanol being added to 95 percent of the gasoline sold in the United States today, which helps prop up corn prices for farmers.
The commissioners' official stance is that they aren't against alternative energy but just want to make sure that everyone does everything right. However, it appears that the commissioners are searching for ways to try to stop even smaller projects than the Ohio Revised Code would allow them to prohibit. And simply adding a county "Mother May I?" layer to the approval process will discourage applications to the state; many of our local farmers think of themselves as the quiet in the land and would rather die than speak at a county commissioners meeting and appear on the front page of a newspaper.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Guest column: Sheep and solar panels are a good match in many ways
