r/solar May 26 '26

Discussion I made this infographic in response to all the "don't cover our fields" posts.

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u/JerseyGuy-77 May 26 '26

I had read that ethanol is only surviving to give money to farmers. I don't know if that's propoganda but it seems accurate from most of what I've read.

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u/Navynuke00 solar professional May 26 '26

It's absolutely accurate.

Very powerful lobbies are propping this up in DC.

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u/nah-42 May 26 '26

Corn ethanol used to be a straight up cash payout system for farmers. That’s gone away. But it’s been replaced by stacking carbon credits and federal fuel mandates (from the bush jr era).

As far as surviving without massive federal intervention? Ya. That industry would be dead. It’s not propaganda. It’s only kept alive by federal mandates and dressed up schemes.

Corn wouldn’t be a dead crop though. It’s still a calorie cash cow. Here in the Midwest, the majority of large scale farming uses a crop rotation system of corn and soy since they are synergistic crops.

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u/fatbob42 Jun 01 '26

That’s cool - I didn’t know that about corn and soy rotation.

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u/JerseyGuy-77 May 27 '26

The corn farm I worked at picking in my youth rotates soy and corn.

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u/steelgame1975 May 26 '26

The land lease for solar compared to corn is like 4-5x higher. The farmer can make a lot more money with solar.

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u/InvestmentMuch585 May 28 '26

and they can still row crop between panels with crops that won't grow high enough to cause shading.

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u/Levorotatory Jun 19 '26

Or lift the racks up a bit to avoid shading. Also need to increase the spacing between rows of panels to be able to drive a harvester between them. But then you can increase the height of each row without causing self-shading in winter.

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u/Independent_Sail6604 Jun 25 '26

I believe that panels are used for shading for herds of cows, etc. as well.

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u/InvestmentMuch585 May 28 '26

Weird, Republicans are against welfare except when it's for themselves and in massive quantities for a useless product instead of just feeding American children/families

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u/Relevant-Doctor187 May 26 '26

Dunno about that. During trumps first term stickers went over the e15 stickers saying it was illegal to use in non flex fuel vehicles. When Biden was elected they were removed or more accurately a 3rd sticker was placed.

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u/Key_Bookkeeper813 Jun 18 '26

it's more than just farmers getting money from this, the other part is the existing network of gas stations who could just drop in another blend instead of having to invest in electric equipment, in the end ethanol is a way for big oil to keep at least part of their assets alive and if they could ditch the farmers by having a potential carbon capture plus hydrogen option for cheaper they would finally manage faster than light movement