Solar Power: A Growing Farmland Commodity
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The growing market for biofuel has created a lot of new opportunities for farmers to diversify into new products – i.e. fuel or feedstock production. While canola acreage is increasing across North America in response to this heightened demand, there are also forms of alternative energy that can make use of the wide expanses of farmland that do not require planting. Wind farms are getting a lot of press as they continue to pop up across the country, but solar farms are also a very viable source of green energy that are continuing to grow in popularity.
Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Cash crops have a certain inherent amount of instability, and for farmers looking for reliable sources of income, harvesting energy, such as solar power, can provide an additional promise of longevity.
Furthermore, with commercialized, industrialized farms dominating the industry, harvesting green energy could well be the saving grace for the traditional family farm. In Ontario, for example, farmers can receive licenses from Ontario Power Generation to sell their energy to the province’s energy grid. While it’s not big business enough to save the average family farm, the thousand or so dollars that a contributing producer can raise certainly helps.
Prior to the licensing program in Ontario, solar panels were a bit of rarity. In 2009, solar installations contributed less than 100 megawatts of electricity to the provincial grid. However, with new incentives like the licensing program in place, that number is expected to jump to as much as 700 megawatts in the next two years.
Solar energy production is attractive to producers looking to get involved in energy production since the prices for photovoltaic panels have come down with increased demand for them. And, unlike wind farms, the panels can often be installed fairly discreetly – on the roofs of houses and barns for example – saving space in the fields for crops.
The prices of solar technology are expected to come down even more going forward. Countries like China are beginning to invest heavily in the technology and as it becomes more commonly used, its attendant devices and services will also come down in price.
