Japan’s solar and crop farming will revitalise agriculture

Japan Next-Generation Farmers Cultivate Crops and Solar Energy, Renewable Energy World, Junko Movellan, October 10, 2013 San Diego, Calif. — Farmers in Japan can now generate solar electricity while growing crops on the same farmland. In April, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) approved the installation of PV systems on existing crop-producing farmland. Previously solar generation on farmland, productive or idle, was prohibited under the Agricultural Land Act.

This co-existence or double-generation is known as “Solar Sharing” in Japan. The concept was originally developed by Akira Nagashima in 2004, who was a retired agricultural machinery engineer who later studied biology and learned the “light saturation point.” The rate of photosynthesis increases as the irradiance level is increased; however at one point, any further increase in the amount of light that strikes the plant does not cause any increase to the rate of photosynthesis.

By knowing that too much sun won’t help further growth of plants, Nagashima came up with the idea to combine PV systems and farming. He devised and originally patented special structure, which is much like a pergola in a garden. He created a couple of testing fields with different shading rates and different crops. The structures he created are made of pipes and rows of PV panels, which are arranged with certain intervals to allow enough sunlight to hit the ground for photosynthesis ……

“The solar sharing can re-activate the declining farming sector,” said Makoto Takazawa, the owner of the 34.4-kW Kazusatsurumai Solar Sharing Project (Figure 2) in Chiba Prefecture. This is the first project in the nation to take advantage of the FIT scheme……. the solar shared farming is a way to revitalize Japanese farmers, providing opportunities to increase income and contribute to the nation’s energy need. ….Nagashima suggests solar-shared farming for ranches in the U.S. He pointed out a few benefits of PV systems over grass on pasture: the PV system can provide shade for cattle or sheep to rest underneath and because of higher soil moisture level, the shading will reduce irrigation expenses.

For Japan, it will require about 2.5 million acres of land to supply Japan’s total electricity with PV. Under the solar shared family, it will take about 7 million acres of farmland to supply the same amount of electricity. Japan currently has over 11.3 million acres of available farmland. “Before the Industrial Revolutions, farmers provided both crops and energy (firewood and charcoal) to the society. The solar-shared farming makes again for farmers to provide two important products from nature and will revitalize the farming sector,” Nagashima stated. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/10/japan-next-generation-farmers-cultivate-agriculture-and-solar-energy?cmpid=WNL-Friday-October11-2013