Good ole Barnaby and The Beetroot Heads are often on TV etc bangin on about the negative impacts of renewable energy infrastructure downgrading agricultural land.
However on a recent Landine program, a very different picture emerged......out Dubbo way (in the mighty Central West of NSW) a farmer was painting an exciting picture of the impacts on his farming activities. He listed the following benefits of large scale solar panel operations on his sheep farming property as being:
1. Even during the most severe droughts he had an income from the power company running the operation.
2. Due to condensation run off, in dry times the sheep still had feed. As a result, his sheep were yielding a higher, superior clip.
3. During the heat of the day the sheep gathered under the panels for shade.
4. The panels acted as a windbreak.
5. The panels provided carbon-reduced free electrons to power the farm.
Win,Win,Win,Win,Win!.....not bad.
I remember seeing a story during the horror 2019/2020 drought which opened with an aerial shot of endless barren grassless brown paddocks.....except there was one bright green postage stamp in the middle of it all. When the camera zoomed in, it revealed a paddock full of solar panels with sheep happily chomping away underneath, on the grass growing irrigated by the condensation dripping at night off the solar panels.
There have been many heartbreaking stories emerging from the South Aussie long-term drought of many generations-old farmers having to sell their dairy cattle to abattoirs and abandon their properties. It's called Anthropogenic carbon-induced global warming and leading specialist scientists in the subject area have, for decades now, been warning of the impending increasingly erratic weather patterns....more extreme droughts, more extreme floods etc.
Not only can solar generated electrons reduce global warming inducing carbon emissions, they can also benefit our weather-vulnerable farmers. All my people come off the land, and I'll tell ya this much for nuthin, it ain't no place for the faint-hearted.
Time for Barnaby and the Nats to catch up with the realities of the 21st century......otherwise they're gunna risk having to change their name to The Dumb old Dinosaurs Party!
For anyone interested, simply whack 'Landline solar farms' into your favourite search engines, and scroll down. Well worth a watch, in fact highly recommended! It's called Agrivoltaics.....and it's coming to a farm near you....it may well be the way of the future.
Oh, by the way, with our ultra mega solar installations at our mining sites, The Twigmeister might wanna consider running a few sheep out there!
Hooroo.... we're living in interesting times! Wesley T Tiger III
(20min delay)