Lessening the urban/rural solar divide

One of us was a fourth-generation farmer, and the other has called the Twin Cities home for more than 40 years. While our backgrounds and experiences differ, we share a commitment to the economic and environmental well-being of all Minnesotans and the importance of rural-urban partnerships to accomplish these goals. Here is a modest proposal that, while it would not resolve all our urban/rural differences, could lessen them while indicating how we might reduce them even more.

All of Minnesota's coal-fired power plants will be shuttered by 2035 at the latest and their generating capacity largely replaced with renewables, most of which will serve the electricity needs of Minnesota's urban residents. The default mode often is to develop large solar arrays that can cover hundreds of acres, but what if we instead encouraged the deployment of many smaller solar arrays? Many smaller solar arrays, strategically distributed across our rural landscapes, would result in much less visual impact than large solar arrays. This strategy also would result in the financial benefits of solar being distributed more broadly to more landowners.

Irregularly shaped fields along waterways can be cumbersome and expensive for farmers to cultivate with their large, modern equipment. Converting these inconvenient fields to solar would enable farmers to square off their fields, reduce their input costs and concentrate their efforts on their best lands while they receive guaranteed annual lease payments from solar that can exceed what they could get by growing crops on them.

Smaller solar arrays strategically placed on irregularly shaped croplands along waterways and seeded with pollinator-friendly perennials would yield big water-quality and wildlife benefits and thus expand the constituencies for solar to include not just those who sell or lease their land for solar developments but also fishing, hunting, wildlife, pollinator and water-quality advocates.

Planting pollinator-friendly perennials under solar arrays would result in not only the sites producing carbon-free electricity but also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it back underground in the form of organic plant material. If we as a society eventually put a price on the carbon dioxide our activities release into the atmosphere, then farmers could derive income both from their new crops of clean electricity and also from the carbon pulled out of the air and permanently stored back in their soils.

In short, the idea is that farmers voluntarily choose to use some of their less valuable croplands to produce a valuable new crop that urban Minnesotans want to buy: clean, zero-carbon electricity. The Science Museum of Minnesota's modeling of a small agricultural watershed where irregular croplands adjacent to waterways were converted to solar with pollinator-friendly perennials resulted in combined reductions of nitrate, phosphorus and sediment of nearly 60%.

Every irregularly shaped field is not necessarily a potential candidate for solar. Each site would need to be evaluated regarding whether the electricity it produced could gain access to the electrical grid. Minnesota has a strong network of township, county, state and federal roads that enable crops to be delivered to markets. We may want to think about how we invest in upgrading our electric infrastructure so that as many rural Minnesotans as possible can get clean electricity to markets if they decide to devote portions of their lands to producing this new crop.

Solar energy won't resolve all of the issues that divide rural and urban Minnesotans but, thoughtfully sited, it could demonstrate that how we realize even more shared economic and environmental benefits from our croplands is to create more opportunities to pay farmers to produce them.

Patrick Hamilton has worked on environmental issues for the Science Museum of Minnesota for 37 years. He currently is the director of climate change, energy and the environment. Dave Frederickson has represented southwestern Minnesota in the Minnesota Senate and has served as the president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, president of the National Farmers Union and commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.