Latest / Clean Power Hour / Agrivoltaics and Community-Centric Solar with Iain Ward |EP226

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Agrivoltaics and Community-Centric Solar with Iain Ward |EP226 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Ian Ward: So we we represent farmers. We work for the farmers. We get paid by developers. That's as simple as it is. What our role is is to is to bridge a perceived disconnect between farmers and solar developers. Yet energy sector conversations over here solar developer conversations and agricultural conversations, they're just people doing wonderful things the best they can do.
• 1:19
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• 1:34
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• 1:48
  Tim Montague: We're here at the solar farm Summit, and my guest today is Ian ward. He is the founder of solar agricultural services, otherwise known as SolAg, and we're going to talk all about the agrivoltaics industry and how developers and farmers are coming together to really create a win win for agricultural communities. So welcome to the show.
• 2:10
  Ian Ward: Thank you. Great to be here. Tim.
• 2:12
  Tim Montague: Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got interested in clean energy
• 2:17
  Ian Ward: so well, really, I'm interested in agriculture, and that's where we got our our feet wet. As a conservation planner with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the US Department of Agriculture, environmental science background, it was all about soil and farming, and solar was a diversification strategy, sort of like, let's put it in the back nine or the back 60 acres, right? And, and let's not interrupt the flow of the agricultural production. That's what I was all about back when solar was a thing done 60,000 70,008 and then in Massachusetts, we're from Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, they came out with a SMART program. In truth that late, to that later, 2000s and we were already working with solar developers. We're already working with farmers, helping them negotiate their leases with solar developers. Yeah, we're on the farming side, right? We're in farming side of the table.
• 3:12
  Ian Ward: And the farmer said, Geez, you know, we'd like to do more of this. And solar developers said, we'd like to do more of this.
• 3:18
  Ian Ward: And the SMART program came out, which incentivized dual use, what the Times called dual use or or putting solar over agricultural lands. And we're at the right place, at the right time to combine, because we were farmers ourselves, we knew the University of Massachusetts, we knew the Department of Agriculture, we were a known entity with farmers that trusted us and the solar developers at that point in time, because we had done enough projects, also developed some trust in us. So we were sort of a catalyst to bridge a gap between farmers and solar developers and get the buy in of the University of Massachusetts and the Department of Agriculture to make to effectuate some of the first projects, commercial projects in the country. That's how we got started in acavoltaics, before the word was even in existence.
• 4:06
  Ian Ward: Yeah.
• 4:08
  Tim Montague: So that was a lot to unpack. Let's, let's paint a picture for our listeners about the status of agrabel takes in the US, you know, because it's further along in some other places, like Europe and Asia.
• 4:24
  Tim Montague: But if you, if you're not working in, you know, New York or Massachusetts or New Jersey.
• 4:35
  Tim Montague: You may never have heard about takes or Texas. You know, solar grazing is a thing now. A lot of developers are starting to put sheep, to run sheep on their on their solar farms. But paint a picture for us, what is the status of of agrivoltaics in the US. And, you know, talking percentages, if you can, in terms of, you know, when it comes to small utility or large utility, what percentage of of solar projects are starting to consider dual use? That's
• 5:04
  Ian Ward: a great question. I think that I, I guess I would ask this question of you, what is agrivoltaics? We're still coming up with a definition.
• 5:14
  Tim Montague: Yeah. I mean, I think of it loosely, as you're growing livestock or crops. Now, you know, Dan French would say crops, critters and conservation. So I'm going to college by training. I love conservation. I love the fact that when you take, you know, bean and corns, the bean and corn fields out of rotation, and grow a and put a solar farm there, and then do native plants, you're actually making an enhancement to the ecological services of the area, right?
• 5:46
  Tim Montague: Industrial AG, is hard on the land, and it's creating a. You know, a lot of runoff in the Gulf of Mexico. All those chemicals that were pouring on to land are ending up in the Gulf of Mexico. That's not an environmental good. Now, there is an economy on that, right?
• 6:01
  Tim Montague: And farmers have figured out what is the most economical farming practice to practice, and they're doing it right. So, so anyway, this, this phenomenon of dual use solar, and I'm with Dan. It's, it's crops conservation and critters, but technically, I would say agrivoltaics. You're growing food, you're growing livestock and that and generating clean electrons,
• 6:36
  Ian Ward: yes, and I would say that that is, when you we look at it, what's what makes common sense on that environmental side, if you're just talking about pollinator habitats, yeah, that's sort of been lumped into agrivoltaics, but that's really like this other word, eco voltaics, right? You're just doing pollinator habitat. I kind of draw the line at at does what you're doing feed people,
• 7:00
  Unknown: right?
• 7:00
  Ian Ward: That's agriculture.
• 7:00
  Ian Ward: You can argue that pollinator habitat is providing honey and that that's and pollinators
• 7:09
  Tim Montague: for food crops.
• 7:09
  Tim Montague: Let's remember that many food crops do rely on wild pollinators, absolutely so. But
• 7:15
  Ian Ward: under an array, does, if you're looking at what's in the fence, yeah, under the array, yeah, that's in my mind.
• 7:24
  Ian Ward: Agrivoltaics is producing food under those panels, yeah, and
• 7:28
  Tim Montague: honey would qualify for sure,
• 7:29
  Ian Ward: this is not mutually exclusive. That's the opportunity that's that's in front of us is you can have livestock. You don't have to be solely livestock. You could have row crops. You don't have to be solely row crops. You can have pollinator habitat. And you don't have to be solely pollinator habitat. If you look at the entire like, if I was gonna rank things, pollinator habitat is on the on the easiest, lowest front the next up is sheep grazing, solar grazing. Yeah, are are pretty easy too. I'm not disparaging what it takes to do, but I'm just saying from from a access and planning perspective, pollinators, then sheep, and then the next level would be row cropping or grazing with cattle.
• 8:11
  Ian Ward: And then the next step, kind of the the epitome of what a good agrivoltaic array would do, is incorporate all of the above so you you can integrate renewable, regenerative practices that in court, that encourage soil health, building the organic matter, fertilizing with compost teas, fertilizing with the animals that are grazing. So you're harvesting and you're putting back into the soil. And because of the way that agrivoltaics, when you're combining energy sector, money resources with agricultural sector land, and know how, now you have this kind of this, this perfect confluence of saying, we're going to, essentially, we're gonna soil developers are already paying for vegetation management. They're paying for it right to pay lawn mowers to do what they do.
• 8:58
  Tim Montague: It's the largest expense in terms of their own M budget. Yes, vegetation management.
• 9:04
  Ian Ward: So And traditionally, farmers are on the lowest rank of compensation. They have land.
• 9:08
  Ian Ward: They're generally extracted from oil, solar. It's a wonderful thing that they have the land.
• 9:18
  Ian Ward: They have the asset, and generally, not all farmers, but there's a general lack of understanding of how valuable, what their resources are, are worth, and how much money people are making from those resources.
• 9:28
  Ian Ward: So if we can say, let's just instead of solar developers saying, that's great, it's going to cost us millions of dollars to manage vegetation, let's give the land to the farmer to manage for vegetation. We can save all that money. Well, that's a little disingenuous, from my perspective as a farmer advocate. How about we just keep that line the same and pay that vegetation management to the farmer, or to multiple farmers.
• 9:52
  Ian Ward: And now, when you create that picture, now the farmer, because yeah, 50% or around 50% of the farmland, I would say, Yeah, is not farmed by the people that own the land, right? It's farmed by tenant farmers, yep. So the landowner benefits from a solar erect that's fantastic. Good for them, right? The tenant farmer that was on that land, yeah, gets kicked off. Traditionally, if you invite them to remain on that land and to farm, they've got some slowing them down, yeah, got some costs that they're incurring if they get the solar becomes an obstruction for the farmer? Yes, yeah.
• 11:24
  Ian Ward: However, if they're compensated a if they don't pay, if they don't pay rent for that land anymore, that's a however much they were paying in rent that's now staying in their pocket.
• 11:32
  Ian Ward: Yeah, per acre. Yeah. On top of that, if they're getting paid for vegetation management, which is what was already budgeted for, then that's, that's an income. That's a decent sweep.
• 11:42
  Ian Ward: Thing when you actually were looking at only making hundreds of dollars per acre or losing hundreds of dollars an acre, yeah, depending upon what the corn price is, or wheat price or the commodity price. Now we're talking that this makes sense for the tenant farmer to be excited about being there, yeah, then they champion these projects. So
• 12:02
  Tim Montague: let's go a little deeper into this issue of tenant farmers, because I it is, you know, the example I like to give is here in Illinois, a landowner that's renting their lands for cropping is making around $300 an acre. A solar farmer comes along and says, Hey, Mr.
• 12:21
  Tim Montague: Landowner, I'll give you 900 I'll triple your income. And the owner goes, well, heck yeah, I want to triple my income. Let's do the deal. And like you said, then the tenant farmers Sol and so let's talk about some cases, though, some specific types of scenarios, crops, specific territories, right, where you see a win win for the energy developer and the tenant farmer.
• 12:52
  Tim Montague: I'm also very concerned about the agricultural community and the amount of pushback that rural communities are making two energy developers, right? That
• 13:06
  Ian Ward: $900 per acre used to be okay, the low hanging fruit, those farmers that were going to do it have done it already.
• 13:14
  Ian Ward: Yeah, the farmers that the land that's, that's, that's remaining in the amount of solar that's going to be required to meet the goals that the federal government has set for our carbon neutrality. Essentially, from what I understand, you take the amount of solar that's out there today in gross and that's what we have to do every year for the next 11 years, yeah, to get to where they want to go, we're
• 13:35
  Tim Montague: going to 10x right, the amount of solar and and, you know, so the grid will be 50% solar, something like that
• 13:43
  Ian Ward: in those communities that there's capacity for substations. Yeah, substation capacity for the utility grid connection. Those those communities are, if they're not already land based with solar, they're going to be and they're saying, we don't want this anymore. Yeah, we're putting moratoriums on this. You can't force us to for something we don't want. Which I, I kind of agree with them, yeah? What's in it for them? Right? They're looking at these things. They're suffering the consequences of the visual impact and the lack of loss of farmland, the loss of the irrigation distributor, the fertilizer distributor, all those things that we're supporting that community, yeah, are now taken away, unless you farm it. So that $900 an acre in a scenario, I would predict that over the next two or three years, it's it's almost going to be required that you keep agriculture in place, that you look at that what you're making.
• 14:36
  Ian Ward: So the landowner, great. It sounds good to have $900 per acre, yeah, if you have a project. But if you go three years and you still don't have a project, and you get appealed by neighbors and whatnot. But what's good? What good is that?
• 14:50
  Ian Ward: Yeah, so now the landowner benefits, but I know how to let's call that. Let's call that number staying the same. Sure the vegetation management, it's already budgeted for whatever that in every region is different, right? Whatever?
• 15:05
  Ian Ward: They're paying a landscaper to manage a vegetation, either for fire control or for weed control, they're managed at vegetation. You take that and you and you, it's no harm from to the landowner. The landowner doesn't care. They were going to sign off on that land anyway.
• 15:24
  Ian Ward: They were not responsible for the vegetation management.
• 15:26
  Ian Ward: They're already foregoing the rent that they were going to make from the tenant farmer.
• 15:29
  Ian Ward: They're making their piece of the pie the $900 Yep, because of$600 more than 300 they're getting right, yep. So now the solar developer has the capacity to say we've already budgeted.
• 15:40
  Ian Ward: We don't need you to pay the rent. That's saving $300 that farmer's saving $300 and let's just say it costs $200 per acre to MIT. That's a $500 per acre swing. And I can tell you firsthand, when I spoke speak with farmers in Illinois, the first thing they say is, what's going to grow underneath all that shade. The second thing they say is, my equipment will fit. And the third thing they say is, even if all those things worked, I don't have the time.
• 16:12
  Ian Ward: There's me and my brother running 6000 acres. We don't have time to spare. We can't monkey around with those panels.
• 16:19
  Ian Ward: And all valid, yeah, the question is that I that I'm not saying anything other than asking questions. What would it what would it take for you to you know, what would it feel like if you'd have to rent that ground? Wow, you know, that's that's okay. What would it feel like if you got paid also, and that $500 per acre swing all of a sudden? Now they're like, keep talking. And now maybe we can justify taking an extra two days because our we're already netting what we were going to net after production, and we get to keep the crop and but they're not sure what's going to grow or how much of it's going to grow.
• 16:56
  Ian Ward: And the question I ask is, is that kind of a payment enough for you to take the risk? It's a little bit of the challenge.
• 17:03
  Ian Ward: Like, are you do you think you could figure out how to grow soy or wheat or something underneath there? Like, yeah, we're farmers. We figure things out, yeah. And when you when farmers are engaged like that, and they figure out, it's gonna take time, but when there's an incentive like this, those farmers that are willing to be on the roller coaster ride that is agrivoltaics. At the moment, they start engaging. And then the second, third time you're talking about they're coming up with ideas. Hey, you know what?
• 17:29
  Ian Ward: I think if I put in a hay rotation, I can, I can put my heifers in there, my or my cow calf pair around the periphery, and I can hay it. What if I get two cuts and then I grace with sheep afterwards. What do you think would that work? We'll find out, but they're coming up with those ideas themselves.
• 17:47
  Ian Ward: Yeah, that's a real case scenario. Okay,
• 17:51
  Tim Montague: and so one of the things I hear you saying, though, is that farmers have to be creative and and not necessarily stick to their status quo. Of Well, I've been growing corn and beans for the last 50 years. That's what I want to grow, because we don't.
• 18:05
  Tim Montague: It's TBD, if you can grow corn and beans, I think underneath a tracker, yeah, if you jack it up 10 feet off the ground, maybe.
• 18:13
  Tim Montague: But can a standard racking, you know? And that's, there's this slight disconnect, right?
• 18:22
  Tim Montague: There's, there's established equipment, and then there's, you know, this different style of equipment that you see coming from Europe, where they're putting solar over grape vineyards or over fruit trees, you know, 15 foot tall trackers, and that's a completely different animal. But what? What else can you give our audience a taste of in terms of, here's an example of farmers that have either gotten creative or figured out how to grow the same stuff they were growing and put solar on their, on their, you know, on their land
• 19:03
  Ian Ward: so, and there's two ways to answer that. There's, there's in Massachusetts, there's an incentive. In New Jersey, there's going to be an incentive, yep, and, and those in when you have a carrot, you can innovate, there's some money to offset the costs of going high or to go wide or to go vertical panels, and that's, that's wonderful, wonderful thing, and it's not a one size fits all, if we're like my, my desire, my goal, personal goal, company goal, is to, is to tend the regeneration of millions of acres of farmland, the revitalization of 1000s of farm families And the viability of 1000s of beginning farmers across the US and internationally. That's, that's our mantra. Yeah. How do you do that if you don't scale so we, we could have it's and again, it's not one size fits all. I think what we're proving in Massachusetts is that you can innovate, that the incentives allow for creativity. We're we're smaller projects. They're distributed generated, distributed generated projects, community solar, seven and a half megawatts or so, 2030, acre projects, yep. What that allows us to do is fail fast. We're trying different things. So that when a utility developer that's looking at 1000 acres, 100 megawatts, 3000 acres, when they can go in with some information what works, what doesn't work.
• 20:27
  Ian Ward: They're likely the likeliness of them being able to afford to raise all the panels up may not be, it may not be in the cards, given the interconnection fees and all the other things that are going along with that state.
• 20:37
  Ian Ward: So figuring out how to have a conventional off the shelf design with the exact the off the shelf racking system. Work with agriculture, then it becomes a management thing, if, if the technology doesn't change, but the access to the land given the farmer, 24/7, access, getting insurance companies to be okay with that, having, as far as PPE is concerned, having not no requirement to have a hard hats, yeah, right, or, or steel toed boots, but just you can wear what you wear. As a farmer, we just want you to have a bump cab ball, which, which fits, which, try to pick lettuce the hard hat. Yeah, it falls off. Bump cap. It fits. It does its job.
• 21:19
  Ian Ward: It blocks the sun from your eyes, like things like that, common sense. Iowa State's doing that. Let's, let's replicate, duplicate, learn from and apply.
• 21:31
  Ian Ward: So I think looking at construction, understanding where drainage tile is, understanding where irrigation lines might be, that's where the that's how you can be.
• 21:42
  Ian Ward: Agriculturally sensitive, engage with the farmers. Have a product that is, that is pro farming, that's not changing the design, per se, except for burying the cable. If I were to to say to your audience, like Malka, I don't have any, I don't have a lot of extra money, but I have a little bit, where should I spend it? Bury the freaking cable.
• 22:03
  Ian Ward: Yeah, if it's not buried, how are you going to get down a row?
• 22:08
  Ian Ward: You're not gonna do a three point turn and come back. I've tried it. It doesn't work. You want to damage some panels.
• 22:14
  Ian Ward: That's what you do. So bury the cables. Simply bury the cables for everywhere that you want to try to try to do something other than sheep grazing, because sheep will work around them. But other than sheep grazing, to grow a row crop or hay them, need to have access down the panels. Secondly, you do that.
• 22:30
  Ian Ward: So, you know, sort of gratitude having, well, that's the primary thing. Just, just do that, and we're ahead of the game. Other than that, if you have you just have a supply of water that you can put in, or plan ahead for water is necessary for for crops depending upon your growing region, for livestock, depending upon like you just need to get there. So plan those two things and you're ahead of the game.
• 22:57
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• 23:20
  Tim Montague: The 252, 75 pairs. Well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chintpowersystems.com to find out more. So you know, my audience is a national audience here in the United States, primarily, you've mentioned Massachusetts, that's your home state, and where you have, you know, carve outs incentives for dual use solar. That's a good thing. Most states are still behind the curve on this, and you know, so I guess I hear you about modifying standard practices, because what's going to happen is like here in Illinois and Minnesota, and you know, frankly, there's a lot of utility solar happening all over the Midwest that could become dual use solar down the line with some forethought, Right?
• 24:22
  Tim Montague: But if they use the standard practices today, with above ground cable, for example, which is a standard practice in large scale. Solar, it's going to be problematic, right? And retrofitting is going to be very expensive. You can't get tractors down those rows, although they do have to mow. So they're running mowers down, down those rows, but they're doing turns, right? They're you, they're using a mower that is designed to make tight turns.
• 24:46
  Tim Montague: They're not using standard fabric workout, correct?
• 24:52
  Ian Ward: And there in there is in the future is smaller, John Deere, Kubota, Honda, they're looking at AI driven battery, Monarch tractor battery powered, solar charged tractors that can be autonomous. So you could have four of those. Maybe it's not a 40 foot wide swath of a combine today, or or or tiller, but you could have, you could have 410 foot ones that autonomously go.
• 25:19
  Ian Ward: That is the future, drones, using drones, is the future.
• 25:22
  Ian Ward: Probably not too distant. It's gonna be three to five years.
• 25:25
  Ian Ward: Farmers don't have it today, and we're talking about today. So this is what I wanted to say before the two thing, if you do nothing else, just don't grade the lands like let's just and that's actually a savings.
• 25:39
  Ian Ward: Invest in the tracking system that allows for very slight variability and grade leave the soil that Mother Nature has given us, even as deteriorated as it may be because of farming practices, it's still the A horizon soil is better than the B horizon soil and the C horizon soil. Talking soil scientists now, yeah, top soil is not just two inches. There's a plow layer, and it's been in the zero gank layer. So let's preserve it. Let's not strip it off for that, for because it's easy, yeah, because we want to standardize, and we want the EPC contractors to just be able to just plug and play and go, Yeah, let's think about it a little bit. So Construction wise, this really falls upon the the EPC contractors. And it's, it's, it's incumbent upon the solar developers to contract with a set an expectation for agrivoltaics with the EPC contractors, yeah, and follow that through, because it's, that's where things go awry in a hurry. So if you start with not grading for. Minimal grading, yeah, and then bury the cables.
• 26:43
  Ian Ward: You're You're 100% rewarded.
• 26:47
  Ian Ward: What
• 26:47
  Tim Montague: I hear you getting at, though, is that there is a playbook for agrabel text, yes, and someone needs to write that playbook. Has somebody done that? We're writing it
• 26:56
  Ian Ward: collectively? I'd say yeah. It's this is this is truly a movement. It's a food movement. We have a growing population. We have a disparity on food, where it's coming from.
• 27:09
  Ian Ward: We've increased in desertification. So where are we going to produce our food 20 years from now? Yeah, when we have the aging population and younger folks not coming in, because it doesn't make a lot of money, we're we need to do something different.
• 27:22
  Ian Ward: Regenerative agricultural practices are one of those different things. Agrivoltaics, one of those different things, solar, sorry, winds like that's on here, one of those, if you combine, this is why it's exciting to have the energy sector take a less extractive role and actually contribute to the viability of the farms, not just economically, yeah, but say we're going to do this to help our soil, to get multiple new generational farmers, old generation, yes, are their children back? And are they? Are they wanting to come back to the farm if we make farming sexy again, economically and emotionally, and there's a viable plan to farm that land, because there's solar inputs.
• 28:08
  Ian Ward: Now we have, we now we can integrate soil health practices, because we're not just beholden to the insurance company or to our bank to pay off a note that's already we already have non disturbance agreements in place because the solar array is has we have a lease and get into the details here. But are we? Is that a possibility? Yes, is there a movement afoot? There is there's no playbook yet, and that's a beautiful thing. Back in the 70s and 80s, I'll just make a quick analogy. Back in the 70s and 80s, people were all about green building. My remember, before the LEED program, sure, they're all about the Green Building, the LEAD program came up that certification, which is fantastic on the surface, that one could argue that the LEED program, it's like, Oh, we've met the minimum requirements.
• 28:57
  Ian Ward: We're good. Where's the innovation today on green building? What's beyond lead, yeah,
• 29:05
  Tim Montague: House of Mouse.
• 29:07
  Ian Ward: So, so what? What you know in coming up with a standard or a playbook that says if you do this, you're great, you're already there, in some ways, it's limiting. So how do we have a movement that's dynamic? Because agriculture is dynamic, sure, nature is dynamic, yeah, how do we not put this into a box. Have enough boxes to check, to say that you're doing a minimum, but not say that that's enough, yeah.
• 29:30
  Tim Montague: But just like with these, when you you know, you see the pollinator checklist that different states have developed, that's a that's a very important foundation, because it it does prevent a lot of greenwashing from happening, which is a real thing. When there's a profit motive, companies are going to cut corners and claim green benefits because they know it's good marketing. It's good for their shareholders, etc, right? Their shareholder relations, so to speak. So anyway, I'm a proponent of creating certifications, because it is a basement. Yes, we want to have aspirational goals, but we also need a foundation, because otherwise you're going to have 10 different definitions of what is a agri, solar friendly construction methodology, right?
• 30:25
  Tim Montague: Yes, people will claim, oh, no, you can have above ground wiring. Look at, you know, look what we're doing. Yes, technically you can, but that doesn't mean it's a best practice,
• 30:37
  Ian Ward: right? So well and that there's a difference between so I'm glad you said this. There's best practice, and then there's, like, the law standard, right? So you can, if we can, you don't want to stymie creativity. The organic certification that's been 6% of our market for 30 years. How come it's not grown a lot? Yeah, it's like, well, we're certified. You're not. Why is that? That's a good question. I ask you. Why is that, if we're going to actually look at our disparity, how to get food, healthy food, nutritious food, into the hands of people that need it the most, right? How do we do that? That's what I'm talking about. This is this is a food movement. Yeah, when we can regenerate the soils, and we can think about as a living system.
• 31:24
  Ian Ward: Carol Sanford's renewable life for a regenerative life. Yeah, she talks about how to think about things, not just in a box, but look at the entire system.
• 31:38
  Ian Ward: That's what the egg will takes, allows us to do. Let's look at how are we getting. Adding inputs to that farm. What are we putting on that farm? What? What about access? Where's that crop?
• 31:48
  Ian Ward: What are we producing for a crop? Where's that crop going?
• 31:50
  Ian Ward: Who's it feeding? Is it going to ethanol, or is it going to a feed lot, or is it going to a supermarket directly? Let's, let's talk about all those things. Maybe we This isn't this is 1% as we've heard, this is 1% of all the farmland. What if we took that 1% and did something different than what we're doing today, and does that when there's money involved? Yes, there's greenwashing, there's potential for all that. There can be a bad apple in every bunch. But we have the opportunity right now, collectively, to write what we think our best management practices allowing for a dynamic adaptations, creativity, and that is what wakes me up every morning and inspires me to do what I'm doing. Because we're we're right there, we have the opportunity in the next little while here, yeah, to influence what
• 32:41
  Tim Montague: this looks like so in our last couple of minutes together in what exactly are you doing? What? What is solag doing? How do you How does the rubber meet the road? What are the services that you're providing, and to whom?
• 32:54
  Ian Ward: So we we represent farmers. We work for the farmers. We get paid by developers. That's as simple as it is, what our role is, is to is to bridge a perceived disconnect between farmers and solar developers. Yet energy sector conversations over here, solar developer conversations and agricultural conversations, they're just people doing wonderful things the best they can do. Yep, the gap is a, I say, perceived, because once you start to bridge that gap, it's like, oh, this is why you're doing that. Oh, this is why you're doing that. Oh, yeah, we're in the same boat. Let's row together. And that's, that's the magic of it's not magic, but that is what we do. Yeah, we bridge that gap. We allow for con, the connection to be established, trust to be established because, yeah, solar developers have not traditionally been trusted by farmers because they they've come in, they've seen some projects, some of those bad apples have happened and and they've taken away to trust. Or when you say something to a farmer, it's gospel. You say you're going to do something, you do it. And if, if, if you say something, and then the higher ups later on, two years down the road, say, well, that's too expensive. Well, you can't do that. Oh, and they don't tell the farmer. And then something else happens. That's that you lose trust, you don't get it back. You have to, you spend a lot of time upfront, building trust, and it can go like that.
• 34:22
  Ian Ward: So our journey is to lose absolutely I mean, this is basic stuff. That's what we do, and we and we and we say, let's set appropriate expectations across the board. Let's communicate up front. Let's have the difficult conversations up front. And now the farmers are part of the team. They're not the traditional solar would say, You're the landowner. We're gonna do our thing. We're gonna inform you when we have a project or not. Dual use doesn't dual use. Aggravable takes does not work that way. It's you're a partner. You're along this roller coaster ride for good or for bad. It's an up and down thing. Here's where we're at.
• 35:00
  Ian Ward: We're at 20% success. We're 40% success. You know what? We would love to move this project forward, but the interconnection is taking like forever, grow a crop another year, and they're informed about that, and they understand, because they're in the community, that there's a community impact. And those farmers are working with the community and solar developers, understanding that their farmers are the asset that they've been, they've been lacking when it comes to community involvement.
• 35:27
  Tim Montague: So that is, I think, one of the the most important messages that I've heard here at the solar farm Summit is that there's an emerging paradigm for solar project development, and that is to really engage and work with the local stakeholders, that includes the landowners and surrounding communities, and take a much more integrated approach. It is somewhat of a foreign concept, I think, for energy companies, who have, more traditionally, just flown in, gotten things done, because they're able to make the economics work that way, right and and that now they're having to rethink things, because there is a growing drum breed, drum beat, a pushback from local communities. And the thing that I forget is that these projects do end up getting clustered near the infrastructure gateway, so to speak, right where there's capacity on the grid for interconnection. And so while it is only one to 2% of the landscape that we're going to solarize, it can be a higher percentage of some communities.
• 36:42
  Tim Montague: Increase, and so that impact is greater.
• 36:45
  Ian Ward: It's a real impact.
• 36:45
  Ian Ward: It's a real impact. And that's where you know, if you were to sum up, like our solar agricultural services or solar legs, role it is to establish the trust on both sides so that we can have honest dialog. And as a farmer first, and I'm a farmer, so I can talk farming with farmers. And it's we, the questions that we ask are land first, farmer, second, solar third. It's what does this land what it used to be, what is its heritage? Tell us about your you know, would your grandfather, father, mother, do on this land?
• 37:26
  Ian Ward: And then, and then, from a from a farming perspective, what would you like to see here? Do you have a succession plan?
• 37:31
  Ian Ward: Let's talk about your kids. Are they coming back? Is there someone in the neighborhood that you would like to see that on this land? We talk about that, we come up with a plan so they're with the farmer. And then we can express that and articulate that with a solar developer, so that the project is is sensitive to all those things, to those basic needs.
• 37:51
  Ian Ward: That's community centric solar development, agrivoltaics, in my mind, and that's what, that's what we specialize in. And it's so super simple. It's just communicating. And the more that people do, what our role is, we're sort of establishing this role, this sort of niche. And it's just, it doesn't have to be a niche, right? It is, if I can suggest something to your audience, would be we're doing this. There's gonna be other businesses that do this too.
• 38:18
  Ian Ward: Let's, let's embrace that. If we're, if we're creating together, there's no competition. There's so much to do, and there's so much to do to establish the bar and raise it that this is, this is part of that movement.
• 38:35
  Tim Montague: Well said, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Please give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with my listeners. I want to thank Ian Ward, the owner and founder of solar agricultural services, otherwise known as solag. How can our listeners find you we
• 38:56
  Ian Ward: are on LinkedIn, www.solarag services.com, and phone numbers we're on, we're on a website happy to chat with anyone and anyone that everyone, anyone that that has an interest in this. It is a passion, and it is something that we're available to talk to.
• 39:18
  Tim Montague: Thank you very much. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow dual use solar.