This publication discusses the principles and practices of grazing multiple species of livestock on pastures. Here, you’ll find a discourse on the benefits of multi species grazing on productivity and profitability, including its positive impacts on pasture diversity and health. Details related to these benefits include stocking-rate decisions, grazing pigs, planning and monitoring, predators and vegetation management. Familiarity with these topics can be useful in better understanding and developing agrisolar operations that include a variety of livestock.
Tag Archive for: Solar Grazing
The Town of Mount Morris commissioned this research to answer questions about the nascent solar-agricultural industry, assess opportunities to attract farmers to the EDF Renewables Morris Ridge Solar Energy Center, and identify viable markets for solar-raised products. The report addresses the current interest of local farmers in grazing sheep and establishing apiaries at Morris Ridge. The study specifically addresses solar grazing concerns, including: budget assumptions, purchase and sale of lambs for grazing, operating expenses, estimated returns and revenues and expenses.
The goal of this study is to assess the environmental impacts of a novel pasture-based agrivoltaic concept: co-farming rabbits and solar PV. The study specifically addresses the life cycle assessments of pasture-based agrivoltaic systems, including the emissions and energy use of integrated rabbit production. These topics are relevant to developing agrisolar operations that include the use of rabbits.
This study was conducted to compare lamb growth and pasture production under solar panels and in open pastures in Corvallis, Oregon in spring 2019 and 2020. The results from this grazing study indicated that grazing under solar panels can maintain higher carrying capacity of pasture toward summer, and land productivity could be increased up to 200% through combining sheep grazing and solar energy production on the same land.
This study was conducted to compare lamb growth and pasture production from solar pastures in agrivoltaic systems and traditional open pastures over 2 years in Oregon. Topics in focus in this study include experimental grazing management, herbage mass, land equivalent ratio and net return of spring grazing. These topics are useful when considering approaches to developing and managing agrisolar operations that include grazing.
This paper examines the current scope of sheep grazing in New York State and the benefits, opportunities, challenges, and barriers to scaling up the sheep industry to graze ground-mounted photovoltaic arrays for vegetation management. The study shows that there are similarities between USSE facilities and those of Distributed Solar Energy’s benefits, opportunities and challenges but that they are modified due to the larger scale of operations of the projects.
This report explores the synergies between farming and solar photovoltaics with the premises that agricultural production on farmland should be maintained and farm profitability and soil health should be improved. The report states that siting solar facilities in Maryland is a major stumbling block to the progress of in-state solar energy generation and finding common ground and possible solutions to issues allows the state to proceed forward in developing agrisolar operations.
Recent research conducted on a Minnesota agrisolar operation showed that grazing sheep at ground-mounted solar projects improves the health and quality of the soil and that consecutive annual grazing treatments to land under solar panels realized more benefits than intermittently grazed land.
The MNL Conservation Grazing Program’s flock of sheep has been grazing under the solar panels of Enel’s 150 MWdc Aurora Solar operation since 2017. The research studied the impacts of sheep grazing on six separate solar PV sites compared to undisturbed control sites.
Soil samples taken in 2020 from six locations were compared to soil samples taken in 2021, revealing a variety of benefits in soil health related to micro and macro nutrients and soil grain size distribution. Managed sheep grazing significantly increased the total carbon storage (10 to 80%) and available nutrients of the soil.
MNL’s solar grazing manger stated that,” More solar means more opportunities for new farmers to get started in the industry. We consult with solar projects throughout the Midwest and the concept of grazing sheep on a solar projects opens the door for new shepherds who may lack easy access to grazing land to get started,” according to a media report by Solar Power World.
The research was made possible through the partnership of MNL, Enel Energy, Temple University, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which also highlighted other potential benefits aside from things like macro and micronutrients in the soil, such as water quality, stormwater control, and healthy pollinator habitat.
Read more about the research here.
This publication discusses the principles and practices of grazing multiple species of livestock on pastures. Here, you’ll find a discourse on the benefits of multispecies grazing on productivity and profitability, including its positive impacts on pasture diversity and health. Also covered are grazing dynamics (how diverse animal species use grazing resources), the types and kinds of fencing and working facilities needed by various animals, and how to deal with predators, mineral supplementation and parasites. These considerations and topics can be useful when developing agrisolar operations that include livestock.
The goal of this study is to assess the environmental impacts of a novel pasture-based agrivoltaic concept: co-farming rabbits and solar PV. Details of the study include a focus on modeled scenarios of emissions use related to rabbit production on agrisolar land. Also included are scenarios on independent solar PV and conventional rabbit production systems and rabbit agrivoltaic systems.
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