I can tell you are no farmer. No tractor is needed in a field maintained by grazing. If tbe panels are mounted high enough sunlight will be cast on the ground for a period each day.
I am a farmer, and this doesn't make sense. Grazing fields aren't really growing crops.
Even if this is just crops that are picked by hand (it mentions broccoli), they typically still have huge machines follow the laborers for them to deposit them in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKyxMKO2kyU
I can't see any good way to harvest a field with solar panels that isn't so inefficiently laid out that it would be better to have two separate fields.
I am not a farmer, but am interested in watching the development of agricultural tech.
>> I can't see any good way to harvest a field with solar panels that isn't so inefficiently laid out that it would be better to have two separate fields.
Would there be scope for smaller autonomous machines? Presumably, there should be some crop configurations that could benefit, but we don't yet have all the results of experiments currently running. Here in Japan, farms are typically much smaller, so there's perhaps greater scope for agrivoltaics than in industrial scale farms in USA.
Pastures used for grazing are managed intensively using big machines. (Source: I live next door to a large dairy farm. Pastures irrigated with centre-pivot systems.) Pastures get replanted/supplemental sowing every so often, weeds get sprayed with herbicides, fields get mowed to maintain uniform growth after they've been grazed...
Factory-farming dairy. Nothing at all unusual. If you have some bucolic vision of cows peacefully grazing all day, being led to a milking shed twice a day, flies buzzing in the sunshine... disabuse yourself of the illusion. When people say "factory-farming" they mean something far closer to "factory" than "farm". To keep cows at maximum productivity, dairy farmers (others farmers, too, I'm certain!) are squeezing the maximum productivity out of their pastures, and that means working them intensively; constant management = plenty of machinery.
I can't for the life of me imagine how these operations are going to continue to produce at these levels without the fossil-fuel subsidy they depend on completely.
I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country so rich with cows that Milton Hershey located his chocolate company nearby. I grew up on over 100 acres of that same farmland doing farming things. My Dad in Florida used was a member of the National Cattle Man's Association. I feel grounded in views of farming and acknowledge that my experience has nothing to do with factory farms. Frankly I'm a little embarrassed by the brain power exerted on this thread. I have been a member of both Future Farmers of America, and 4-H.
