When the Augusta Supervisors hear the words “solar energy,” do they think it a threat to county harmony, or a God sent gift needing only to be unwrapped? The Board to date seems to think “threat,” while I see the goodness of God.
To make the point of how people can draw opposite conclusions to the same set of facts, I offer a dated, 100-year-old, story of two shoe salesman going to Africa (or perhaps then, West Virginia) to assess the potential market. The first telegraphed back: “Coming home. Nobody here wears shoes.” The second telegraphed to the corporate headquarters: “Send our total inventory. Nobody here has shoes.”
Each day the Supervisors deny the now and coming ubiquity of solar capture, they reveal a blindness to progress and potential. Where they see a loss of pasture, the wise see a cash infusion to support the next generation of farming ingenuity.
It is likely true that some of the folks now concerned about their “view shed” intruded on others’ sense of agricultural permanence, when they established their 5-acre homesteads on subdivided crop land.
When farmers first saw opportunity in turkey houses, many in the public saw a coming dystopia. The turkeys, the associated work, and the resultant incomes came and allowed many farmers to stay profitable. The county is now better for them. Live and learn.
Farmers have enough challenges, whether it’s weather providing too little or too much rain, corporate monopolies in meat packing and fertilizer squeezing profits, or hypocritical “not in my backyard” neighbors, without Supervisors now deciding what crops farmers may or may not plant.
Solar panels are outwardly passive. They stand quietly receiving sunlight, which is internally converted to energy to be used by the farmer or sold to the electric grid. The farmer gets paid, and the land remains for grazing and harvesting. All good.
Conversely, in Iowa, over 1 million acres of corn are planted, tended to, harvested, and trucked to Big Oil. Who then processes it as a component in ethanol fuel production. Only then to be re-trucked to filling stations. “Easy-Peasy,” not so much.
The mind-numbing inefficiency of this process is exceeded only by the mind-numbing tax and food waste required to keep this grift afloat. Iowans receive as much as $90 an acre in government relief, as well as the income from the sale of corn.
Big Oil is held harmless as whatever the additional cost is in the buying and processing of corn, instead of barrels of oil, is just more to pass on to us.
Our subsidizing of corporate farms is accomplished directly through the Federal fuel tax and indirectly by paying more for food when taking millions of high yield acreage out of food production.
Where national politicians use their power and our money to overpay for energy; our locals prevent our people from harvesting a free energy crop. “Stupid is as stupid does”.
Solar energy may not be in its infancy, but it is far from mature. Much work is underway to not just make solar panels compatible with agriculture but an enhancement.
To create open space between panel rows, vertical units are available instead of those laying flat. To allow cattle grazing, the sun catchers can be constructed higher than the steer’s height. There exist solar panels that can rotate to improve collection and allow useful shade as desired.
West Virginia University is investing millions in solar farm study focused on land like ours. Rolling hills, and steep mountainsides, are not as easily planted and harvested as nice flat acreage.
WVU believes solar farms offer a more profitable use of their landscape; while still accommodating grazing, a huge win-win.
Augusta County would do well to follow the study and work of WVU and Virginia Tech and begin to promote solar farms rather than throwing up roadblocks.
The farm community is famous for self-reliance. The ability to produce its own energy and sell the excess is in the great tradition of having milk cows, laying hens and hardy pigs for family consumption and market sale.
The county, instead of constraining our most environmentally conscientious, our most innovative producers, when planting their crop of sun receptors, should butt out. There is no county issue to manage. No increases in service needs, no smell, no runoff, no traffic increases, no nothing.
Augusta County needs to stop looking to Washington and Richmond for regulatory and tax guidance. In each case, less is more.
Let the sunshine in!
Tracy Pyles is the former chair of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors.
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