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If your next door neighbor worked on the production line at a tire factory, how much would it change your social relationship with him if half of those tires were being exported, or sold to manufacturers of ICE cars?

Or - maybe you're an introvert, or live in a place where it's normal to have no social relationships with your neighbors. If so, try talking to somebody who has lived in a small farming community. It is a very, very different world.



This sounds very specific to your experience and viewpoint developed via whatever small farming community you have experience of.

I've had six decades around rural communities, mostly in Australia, often in far flung parts of the world, there are few here that feel solar farms are dystopian giga-scale machines, mostly they think of them as dual use for pasture and additional guaranteed farm income.

Raised panels make the moisture retention better, increase the nutritional value of the ground cover and makes for better wool - all positives.


Point. I was mostly speaking to the parts of America which are hostile to solar farms.

OTOH, it sounds like your experience is with solar/farming dual-use. Vs. America seems inclined to a "buy the land, kick off the farmers, put up the panels, and post the No Humans Allowed signs" monoculture model. Which can be all to easy to scale up & do, from a Wall Street point of view.


As stated, a viewpoint unique to your experience in central North America and not one universal to farming communities.

Wall Street isn't exactly the brightest when it comes to optimal approaches.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-graz...

( FWiW the counter arguments raised in anticipation in that three plus year old article didn't come to fruition in the time since across many sites - we do pay attention to water tables here in Australia following disastrous effects of over clearing for 80 years that ended some 50 years past )

The largest current complaint hereabouts in the farming community is the looming onset of a mega garbage dump for the nearest city. It's promised to be well sealed and well maintained, but local people are upset by the intrusion of convoys of garbage from the city - more noise and traffic than a few thousand hectares of solar panels.




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