This article is part of the series “Power Struggle: Building Clean Energy in Rural America.” Read more.

The soil in northwest Iowa is so fertile it’s referred to as ​“black gold.”

“It’s incredibly rich, wonderful topsoil from thousands of years of silty deposits from the Missouri River,” said Luke Seaberg, a researcher at Iowa State University’s extension program. So rich that some counties restrict development on land that scores especially high on the state’s official Corn Suitability Rating.

The Smith family has been farming that soil for six generations in Cherokee County, population 11,000. But the corn market has been depressed lately, prompting the three Smith brothers to consider other uses for a 160-acre parcel, 10% of their farmland. Looking at rising beef prices and the region’s ballooning energy demand, they landed on an idea: Graze cows amid rows of solar panels.

“We’re trying to diversify into another revenue stream. The cattle business is really good right now, and grain has been not as good,” Mark Smith told me over the phone, as he drove across the state for his son’s high school football game. ​“With solar, we can put cornfields back to pasture. Solar revenue plus cattle revenue makes it work.”

But to loft the solar panels up above the butting heads of grazing cattle costs more than a regular solar installation; indeed, this type of agrivoltaics only recently entered commercial-scale use , at a 40 -acre, 3 -megawatt site in Tennessee developed by Silicon Ranch.

Source link