I have been looking at the anti-solar movement, and my takeaway from this research is that rural Americans, overwhelmingly White, low income, low education level, frightened, and resentful, are being easily manipulated by far-right corporate interests like Koch, that are tied to the continuation of carbon energy. Farmers don't seem to get the opportunity being offered them. I grew up on a farm in Tidewater Virginia, and my father and I ran a registered Angus herd. If I was still on that land and someone came to me and said give us access to a few acres and we will double your income I would take it up in a moment. But that is not what is happening. This article lays out the issues pretty well, and it is a very sad story.
Houser says Page County residents who fought solar development were driven by a not-in-my-back-yard mentality. “It’s pretty. It’s open ground,” Houser says of his property. “But it’s like, you know, some panels on it, that’s not going to change it.” Credit:Ryan Kellman/NPR
Roger Houser’s ranching business was getting squeezed. The calves he raises in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley were selling for about the same price they had a few years earlier, while costs for essentials like fuel and fertilizer kept going up. But Houser found another use for his 500 acres.
An energy company offered to lease Houser’s property in rural Page County to build a solar plant that could power about 25,000 homes. It was a good offer, Houser says. More money than he could make growing hay and selling cattle.
“The idea of being able to keep the land as one parcel and not have it split up was very attractive,” Houser says. “To have some passive income for retirement was good. And then the main thing was the electricity it would generate and the good it […]
Farmers are an intelligent lot. Conservative generally, but intelligent. There will be enough who will run the numbers and decide it is worth their collaboration. And so the transition will move……
Farmers are an intelligent lot. Conservative generally, but intelligent. There will be enough who will run the numbers and decide it is worth their collaboration. And so the transition will move……