Between the rails: Energy and fertilizer for farmers

By Dan Russler

In my first commentary, which I have expanded into a series, I introduced “Version 1” of the Wisconsin Clean Energy Plan (WEP) published by the Evers administration. 

In my second installment, I proposed a tentative action plan that could be used to attract educational resources to Jefferson County from the state, including UW-Extension, UW-Research and various state funding agencies. As an outcome measurement for the energy plan, I proposed using a quantifiable unit of profit for each stakeholder group in Jefferson County. 

In this, my third installment, I will be focusing on opportunities for Jefferson County pasture and truck farmers young enough to take on this kind of opportunity. 

Future installments will focus on other stakeholder groups, such as community solar programs in Wisconsin and how such programs might support local farmers. 

To learn more about agrivoltaic farming, our Jefferson County farmers need look no further than the UW-Kegonsa Research Campus near Stoughton. Wisconsin has now followed Illinois and Minnesota in developing an agrivoltaic research project. This spring, the University of Wisconsin announced that its first, very small, agrivoltaic solar research project will begin the solar permitting process this summer. 

The Kegonsa agrivoltaic solar project has not yet published specific research objectives, but has mentioned that the solar structures will be raised high enough above the ground in order to allow agricultural activities to occur underneath. The spacing between rows of solar panels will be selected to ensure growth of plants both between and under the panels. The crop-related activities mentioned included pasturing as well as machine use under the solar panels. 

For us in Jefferson County, this research project will provide helpful information for our own energy plan. Not only will our farmers benefit, but our county, city and town governments may benefit from understanding and improving the land use and permitting issues encountered by the UW-Kegonsa agrivoltaic solar project. 

Although agrivoltaic research in the United States is just taking off, we can learn much from the more mature agrivoltaic research in northern Europe, which has a climate similar to that of Wisconsin. At least some general benefits for farmers can be described: 

• The partial shade provided by overhead solar panels can increase productivity and decrease water requirements for cool weather and/or shade tolerant crops, especially in hot, dry climates. Potential examples for Jefferson County would be an extended broccoli season for truck farmers and increased pasture production for livestock farmers. 

• Any lowered yields from shade are often overcome by profits related to solar energy use and sales. 

• Agrivoltaic solar energy for irrigation co-located along with crops and powering nearby well pumps from field-based agricultural wells can be more cost effective for farmers than many other irrigation strategies.

• Daytime agrivoltaic solar energy produced on the farm for electric farm equipment is typically less expensive than daytime electrical energy from utilities, which suffer from expensive transmission costs.

The largest obstacles farmers face in evaluating agrivoltaic farming are learning the technical details necessary in use of agrivoltaic solar as well as coordinating the many funding opportunities available before making such a large investment. In the past, many Wisconsin farmers have participated in research projects with academic and commercial researchers in order to ease the transition into new technology. For example, crop-seed improvement would not have been successful without farmer participation. For this next wave of agricultural innovation, large amounts of research and development funding, as well as enlargement of standard incentive programs, have recently been made available from the federal government, originally as part of stimulus funding and now via the new energy and inflation bill. 

However, farmers will need much guidance from county and state officials in order to put together a significant set of funding projects. For example, Jefferson County is currently offering $125 per acre for repurposing grain fields to pasture. Combine that with extensive new funding for cover crops in the new federal climate bill and new sustainability funding for research, and much of the initial investment in agrivoltaic farming could be covered. Unfortunately, one can imagine that the complexity of coordinating this funding could overwhelm any one person. That’s why educational resources from the state will be so important to Jefferson County farmers. 

Next, farmers will need to understand that the number of new crop management choices they will need to make is very large, and the Kegonsa agrivoltaic research project is very small. To expand the Kegonsa project’s influence, surrounding farmers that install agrivoltaics will certainly be eligible for funds related to research on agrivoltaic crops, including pasture development. For younger Jefferson County farmers, this participation is not just a one-time event, it’s an opportunity for a longterm career that can bring multiple funding streams into a single farm business. Here are some opportunities for funding presented as research questions:

• What is the optimum spacing between solar panel structures for a dual-crop strategy involving shade-tolerant and sun-loving crops? This research project will have to be replicated for any possible combination of these two crop categories. 

• What is the best orientation of solar panels within the solar panel structures for each of these crop experiments?

• Can solar powered irrigation systems operating under agrivoltaic structures cool the solar panels while enhancing forage production for shade-tolerant crops like clover?

In addition, new electrical equipment is being developed for farming, ranging from an overwhelming array of electric tractors and tractor accessories to new farm-based products. An intriguing technology in its infancy is electric fertilizer production equipment designed for farmers. The current green ammonia systems for sale require twenty megawatt electrical sources, about what Walmart would install for twenty Walmarts. These might be appropriate for very large grain farmers, but our target stakeholder group of truck and livestock farmers in Jefferson County will need to wait for some time before smaller technologies are available to them. Yet one of the first technology successes for small-farmer production of ammonia was recently published in the leading international biology journal “Nature” by researchers in Australia. For such technologies to become available less than ten years from now is not unreasonable, and they should be considered in our ten-year land-use plans for Jefferson County. 

To help support these farmers as one of the many stakeholder groups in a community solar program, Jefferson County and city management should be providing “one-stop” permitting services that deliver safety at the lowest possible cost to farmers and other businesses. 

Describing himself as a writer of “commentary by a nonpartisan centrist,” Dan Russler is member of two ad hoc analytical groups: Fair Maps of Jefferson County and the Wisconsin Map Assessment Project (WIMAP), and he is one of 36 “Concerned Voters of Wisconsin,” a citizens’ group which submitted in January an amicus brief, also known as a “friends of the court” document, asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reject the Wisconsin Legislature’s proposed Assembly map. He is one of 10 Wisconsin voters who, in March, filed a civil rights lawsuit asking the federal court for a declaratory judgement disqualifying U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, and U.S. Reps. Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany as candidates for office in November. Russler is a resident of Jefferson County.