An excellent reminder of what farming is all about, from a farmer and author.
Sunny California -- farming for a future
By Mike Madison -
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, August 1, 2007
There is no better year for farming in California than the first year of a drought. The lakes and reservoirs still hold ample water from the year before, and the farmer can go about his chores without inconvenient rains confounding his schedule. Sunlight pours down from a cloudless sky.
The crops prosper. Life is good.
That's our situation in the Sacramento Valley at the moment.
We've had an unusually dry year, and I had to start irrigating in January -- ordinarily our rainiest month -- and I've kept at it all through the spring and summer.
Even if I were housebound and someone else was doing the irrigating, I would know from one glance at the electric bill. It takes a lot of power to move that water around, and it's the single biggest expense on my farm. Some of my neighbors, who farm on a bigger scale than I do, have electric bills in the summer of $8,000 a month.
This year, I'm converting my irrigation to solar power, installing silicon panels that turn sunlight into electricity. This will drive the pumps that lift water from underground and push it through the eight miles of plastic pipes that make up my irrigation system. Even though the panels are expensive, the return on my investment is about 12 percent, better than almost any stock or bond fund I could buy.
I'm not alone in the conversion to solar-powered irrigation.
Drive the back roads around here and you will see solar panels on the roofs of barns and sheds or simply mounted on racks out in the open. If we keep at this long enough, we may reach the day when we can take down the miles of poles and wires that bring electricity from afar, and sell them for scrap.
