Agrivoltaics: Producing Food and Energy in the Same Place

Agrivoltaics is the combination of agriculture and photovoltaics to create co-benefits across food, energy, and water systems. There is a lot of research being conducted around the benefits and best practices for implementation of agrivoltaics. We spoke with two experts, Dr. Greg Barron-Gafford from the University of Arizona, and Dr. Brandon Bestelmeyer, research leader at the Jornada Experimental Range, to learn more about this fairly new technology.

Relevant links:
Agrisolar Clearinghouse
University of Arizona Biosphere 2 - Agrivoltaics
Jornada Experimental Range

If you’re enjoying this podcast, please consider rating us and/or leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict, or Podchaser Thanks!

Follow us on Twitter @RainShinePod

Never miss an episode! Sign up to get an email alert whenever a new episode publishes!

Have a suggestion for a future episode? Please tell us!

Come Rain or Shine affiliate links:
DOI Southwest CASC: https://www.swcasc.arizona.edu/ 
USDA Southwest Climate Hub: https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/southwest 
Sustainable Southwest Beef Project (NIFA Grant #2019-69012-29853): https://southwestbeef.org/ 

Transcript

Emile: Welcome to Come Rain or Shine, podcast of the USDA Southwest Climate Hub 

Sarah: and the DOI Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center or Southwest CASC, operated by the USGS. I'm Sarah LeRoy, Research Coordinator for the Southwest CASC. 

Emile: And I'm Emile Elias, Director of the Southwest Climate Hub. Here we highlight stories to share the most recent advances in climate science, weather, and climate adaptation and innovative practices to support resilient landscapes and communities.

Sarah: We believe that sharing some of the most innovative, forward thinking, and creative climate science and adaptation will strengthen our collective ability to respond to even the most challenging impacts of climate change in one of the hottest and driest regions of the world.

The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as endorsement for any of the products, technologies, or strategies discussed.

Emile: Today we're talking about agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics is the combination of agriculture and photovoltaics to create co benefits across food, energy, and water systems. There is a lot of research being conducted around the benefits and best practices for implementation of agrivoltaics. And so we're speaking today with two experts to learn more about this fairly new technology.

Dr. Greg Barron-Gafford is a professor in the School of Geography and Development and Director of the Community and School Garden Program at the University of Arizona. Dr. Brandon Bestelmeyer is a research ecologist and research leader at the Jornada Experimental Range, a research unit of the U. S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Let's start by simply describing agrivoltaics. Greg, can you explain for our listeners what it is and some of the benefits of well designed and located agrivoltaics projects? 

Greg: Sure, and thanks for having this discussion today.

Agrivoltaics, put simply, is the mashup or the connection of agriculture and photovoltaics, which is a fancy way of describing solar panels on the same place of land. So it literally is two practices in the same space. And it's two words mashed up into one. Good agrivoltaics should allow for good co-location of renewable energy and agriculture in a way that isn't doing harm to the other, but how you design it or how you come about this really varies whether or not you are from the farming side or the energy side. So now that we have these two energy and food uses on the same parcel of land, some people ask why? Why would you even do that? And what are some of the benefits that come out of it? We found that especially here in the southwestern part of the U.S. and really, relatively dry environments that you get benefits across the food, energy and water dimensions. In terms of food, because so many of the crops that we grow require a fair amount of water to stay healthy and happy, especially during the dry and hot times of the year, introducing some level of shade throughout the day, as agrivoltaics does, provides a little bit of a respite or a little bit of, prevention of stress from that harsh environment.

And so we see, in a lot of cases, even increased productivity from some of our crop plants because they're in the shade. And the other big one is water. I think everyone here hears about the challenges with water and water availability in the West. And in Arizona and New Mexico, we still feel that quite a bit.

And it's a really simple principle. If you introduce shade, you have less evaporation. And what that means in this system is in an agrivoltaic setting, we can really cut back the amount of irrigation we have to provide to our agricultural crops, because the water that we've put so much energy into getting to the crops can stay in the soil longer.

And the last part is kind of a surprise for a lot of us, unless you're an electrical engineer, but is related to the solar panels themselves. So solar panels can actually, they actually underperform when they get too hot. And so anything you can do to cool them down is going to make them more efficient.

And what's really great about plants is that they lose water naturally throughout the day, just through their natural process of transpiration. But here we're capturing that water loss to actually act as almost like a slow and invisible radiator that helps cool down those solar panels and makes them more efficient.

And so you end up with this win win win cycle from a biophysical perspective. And what we're asking now really is, you know, what are the other challenges that come from this system that otherwise appears to work so well.

Emile: Great, thanks. So, agrivoltaics as a climate adaptation solution to me is a good reminder that while there are many things we can do to address climate impacts, there's no universal solution.

So, can you describe some of the concerns or criticisms related to agrivoltaics? And Brandon, we'll start with you. 

Brandon: Well, thanks, Emile, again, for the invitation. You know, I'd say that agrivoltaics is really a response to concerns about photovoltaic development, with the main concern being the loss of agricultural uses in agricultural lands, and I guess, you know, the open question is the degree to which agrivoltaics mitigates the loss of agricultural uses of the past, and effects on other ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and then also cultural values, which is probably the most tricky part of photovoltaic and agrivoltaic development.

The change in the aesthetics, and the loss of traditional agricultural practices of the past. 

Emile: Excellent, thanks so much. So we've heard about the benefits of agrivoltaics, we've heard about some of the challenges of photovoltaics and then how agrivoltaics might influence those, and so I'm curious about what people are doing to ameliorate some of the concerns related to photovoltaics and agrivoltaic installations.And Greg, we'll start with you. 

Greg: Yes, as Brandon mentioned, the land use conflict that comes up is really one of the primary concerns with photovoltaics that is leading to so much agrivoltaic adoption, or at least interest. Part of that being because you don't have to give up that agricultural identity of not only the landowner but the broader community.

There are many places in the West that are seeing really large photovoltaic expansion because flatlands, relatively flatlands, um, sunny skies, and a lot of the farms are in that area just outside of the city limits where most of the energy demand is. And so it makes for a really good location for renewable energy from solar.

One of those concerns that we hear all the time from farmers is, is the food safe to eat in an agrivoltaic system? Because it is being grown in what would otherwise look like an industrial site. And you know, part of what comes up even in photovoltaic installations is concerns over leaching of chemicals into the soils or into the waters so that it might impact nearby farms.

And so this agrivoltaics concern is actually just a photovoltaic concern. And so what we've been doing in response to that is going and measuring the soils. Actually sampling some of the leaves and the resulting carrots and potatoes and beans and melons and running the analysis to confirm that there are no heavy metals introduced in there.

Another concern is whether or not the plants will still have as much flavor. You know someone told us that peppers are meant to suffer, to make you suffer. They really need to have that high heat, high sun exposure to concentrate all of those spicy compounds. And I can tell you for sure that those peppers are still just as spicy.

But we've also been processing the samples because another reason people do agrivoltaics is to kind of help mitigate some of the impacts of food deserts out there in the West. And so we want to make sure that if we're introducing nutrition, we're not introducing less nutrition in an agrivoltaic setting.

Sarah: Thanks, Greg. Brandon, did you have anything you wanted to add to that? 

Brandon: Yeah, I think the packaging of all this information together into decision support tools, which is something I'll talk about in a minute, with regard to our, our unit's contributions to the science, I think that's going to be really important because there's so many factors to keep track of in deciding to adopt or to not adopt from an economic and from a social, environmental, and a production standpoint.

So it's very, it's a very significant and complex intervention in an agricultural system to go with agrivoltaics and I think the lack of knowledge is a major barrier to people making the commitment to do it. 

Greg: Lack of education is probably one of our biggest efforts, you know, over the course of the last seven years in some of the Farm Bureau meetings that we go to around the state.

We see some of the same groups who have been opposing solar because they don't want to see their agricultural agrarian way of life leaving the town. And so as solar has continued to expand, we've been hearing a lot of those concerns. And you know, whether it's I worry about the soil pollution, or water pollution, or heat coming off of a solar field into mine.

A lot of those concerns end up driving the research questions that we end up raising. And by going to some of these same committee meetings year after year, you can build those relationships enough where people will maybe ask you after the meeting the questions that they didn't want to ask during a meeting, either because they don't have as much opposition as they might seem to have in, in public settings.

You know, they, they don't want to be the first, they don't want to be the early adopter. And what's really been exciting is to see some of the families who were rightfully very critical because of that uncertainty five years ago, now be the ones who are suggesting some of the crops because they see water limitations as something that's going to shut down their farming either way and if this is one way to retain more water in the soil so they can continue to grow with less inputs, now they're making suggestions on crops they would like for us to try before they try them. 

Sarah: Yeah. Thanks, Greg. And so you mentioned, you know, going to farms and teaching folks about agrivoltaics. And so you're actually a part of an expanding global network of agrivoltaic sites. Could you tell us a little bit about those sites and the interest in locations outside of the U.S.? 

Greg: Yes, absolutely. Beyond Arizona, our biggest efforts are in Colorado. But when you move globally, because of all of the again, biophysical benefits we've seen in terms of water savings, the same or even increased plant production. We've been working with drylands around the globe. And so we've created a the An international cohort or coalition of agrivoltaic sites, and as you noted, a lot of that is related to education, and so even an international school of agrivoltaics, where we've had multiple courses, kind of in a hybrid format, some online and some in person, especially in Mexico.

We've got research sites that are similarly designed and studying similar crops in Arizona. In Mexico, just south of Mexico City, in Morocco, in southern Israel in the Arava Desert, in Kenya, in the dryland parts of Kenya, and also in Tanzania. And so by thinking about similar questions and those gradients of environmental space, we're trying to get a handle on not only how will agrivoltaics work in my region right now, but how will it work in the future, which is projected to be even warmer and drier.

So by doing some of my measurements, in southern Israel, I get a sense of my climate future in that space by doing that work right now. 

Sarah: Thanks. Brandon, as the research leader at a research location within the USDA Agricultural Research Service, you were awarded a new program to study agrivoltaics in the semi-arid southwest. So could you tell us a bit about what you plan to investigate in that work? 

Brandon: Yeah, yeah, we're relatively new to agrivoltaics research, and I think the funding that, and really the research direction that, that we were given reflects the broad interest that there is in the USDA for this, this technology. Our research, the project involves two research units that we have here, the Jornada Experimental Range, otherwise known as the Range Management Research Unit, and then the Southwest Cotton Ginning Research Unit, our two ARS labs here in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and we're also collaborating with New Mexico State University, some funding that they received from the Department of Energy.

And our, we have three objectives. One is to test some of the existing agrivoltaics designs in the context of our local systems here in New Mexico and also reflecting West Texas. And a focus on, on crops that are typical for this region, like cotton and chilies, uh, as well as desert grasslands. And this is, uh, I think something that's a bit new within the agrivoltaics research portfolio is, uh, looking at cattle production in the context of these arid grasslands.

There's quite a bit of work that's been done on, on the use of sheep to control vegetation in the context of agrivoltaics, but, but there's very little progress in how to integrate photovoltaics and agrivoltaics with beef production in extensive arid rangelands. So that'll be a particular focus of our unit.

The second objective is based upon what we learn to develop new optimized designs to add to the growing library of designs that can be used in systems like ours. And then finally, to be able to understand the consequences of, photovoltaic and agrivoltaic installations on agricultural enterprises and communities.

So, we're recruiting social scientists to help us with that work, and we hope to integrate biophysical data, so data on vegetation and soils, production, social impacts, and economics into a decision support tool that really gives the manager, community and public lands, as well as, as producers and policymakers, a holistic view of the costs and benefits of agrivoltaics. And then of course our hope is that the technologies will be able to shift, you know, reduce the costs and increase the benefits over time. 

Sarah: Yeah, great. Thanks. So this next question is actually from one of the Southwest Climate Hub staff. And so on her commute to work, there's some photovoltaic sites along her commute, and she said that they seem to be more prone to wind and water erosion.

And so we are wondering if this is a characteristic of most photovoltaic sites, maybe even agrivoltaic sites might help this erosion. I was just wondering what your thoughts are with that.

Greg: Yeah, excellent points I'm glad you brought that up. Photovoltaic sites are more prone to water based erosion, and it's actually one of the features that developers have to work around.

And, you know, in agricultural environments in the West, all that water is a resource instead of a liability. And so this is actually one of the features that we are hoping to resolve with future photovoltaic developments. They're projects even as far away as Virginia, which is a much, you know, more ground cover prone environment.

Where the introduction of all of that runoff from an imperviable surface of a solar panel runs into a space and creates erosion. And so here we're actually taking advantage of all of that excess water to supplement the irrigation needs of the crops that we're growing in rows between solar arrays. And so our biggest solar project is one that we're about to break ground on, um, in the next few weeks.

It's funded by the U. S. Department of Energy as part of a program called FARMS. That's an acronym, of course, because it's government. It stands for Foundational Agrivoltaic Research at the Megawatt Scale. And I think what DOE was seeing was lots of benefits at these smaller scales, but is that actually going to have an impact?

Does that actually still hold when you move up to the the scale of a megawatt, which is about five acres of solar. And so this is an existing solar site. The way that solar is installed oftentimes is to get rid of all of the vegetation, which is hard as a plant person to see. But you're right, in dryland environments we are sparsely vegetated, so does it actually matter that you get rid of the little veg that is there?

And we can say absolutely. And conversely, if you add even a little bit of vegetation back into that system, you can mitigate that erosion, in addition to providing the cooling effect towards the solar panels. But just all that carbon capture, all that carbon sequestration that plants do for us naturally.

Sarah: Yeah, thanks Greg. And actually my next question, you kind of touched on this a bit, but I'm curious if you have anything to add, or maybe Brandon as well, but when you're installing a new agrivoltaic project, you, you know, mentioned this, that there's, there are likely some disturbance to the soil and vegetation that's already at the site.

So is a restoration plan a part of the process when you're actually doing an installation? 

Greg: Absolutely, and I think this is one of the ways that an agrivoltaics mindset is helping advance just the photovoltaics industry around the West. The typical process for solar installation a decade ago was to clear off all potential vegetation that could grow up and shade the panels.

And it came from, as we've been talking about, you know, uncertainty. If a solar developer doesn't have a plant background, everything that grows out of the ground looks like something that could get in the way of your solar panel. And until we started to talk and communicate across the plant and the energy sector, there was just a lot of uncertainty.

And so we went with not assuming the best. And so now that we know that that is their primary concern for solar developers, we're helping them think about, you need to revegetate this site with something. What do you use? Don't use the same slurry that they use to revegetate roadsides, which contains a mix of all kinds of native and non native plants that grow at all kinds of heights.

But there are so many people who understand the biology, the plant biology of the Western U. S. so well that we can give you plenty of ideas on seed mixes that include, you know, low growing grasses or low growing pollinator plants that can do so many other things for our ecosystems, including pollination and benefiting those farms around the perimeter of the solar site, that there's really no reason not to go into this with a restoration plan. And I think for the most part, solar developers see that. And so at least in Arizona, a primary process is not blading the desert away, but rather trying to leave everything in place and be much more intentional about how they drive through and pound in those poles, those piles that hold up the solar array.

Sarah: Yeah, thanks, Greg. Brandon, did you have anything you want to add? 

Brandon: Yeah, the uh, I think the case of, you know, erosion happening under solar panels might have come from, from our region. We have a couple of instances where the ground has been bladed away, there is soil erosion, and I think that's, it's, this is where agrivoltaics ideas and, and approaches are going to be really important because you know, part of the resistance that people have is when you put that slurry down or you put a bunch of gravel down and you really industrialize that piece of ground to try to control the erosion.

And so finding ecological ways of doing that job in a way that also provides other ecosystem services and also beautifies the area and keeps its natural character is going to be really important going forward. 

Emile: So now I'm going to ask you to think about the future and maybe 30 years from now, and just imagine sort of agrivoltaics and the best case scenario for advancement of agrivoltaics and, and what that does, and then also the worst case scenario. So, I initially was going to ask about sort of positive and negative impacts, but, but more thinking ahead to the future. What's your vision for how this could change the, the world, and especially in arid lands?

And then what might be some of the challenges if it doesn't go in that direction? direction. And Brandon, we'll start with you.

Brandon: I’d say that there is accelerated adoption of agrivoltaics over time and that that leads to greater rates of renewable energy production occurring in the context of, of agricultural lands and, and ideally there would be financial and other benefits to producers as a consequence of that adoption. I think, you know, conversely, the negative consequence would be that people adopt agrivoltaics you and regret it.

They find that they're experiencing costs that they didn't foresee and I think that would be a failure of the scientific community if that were the case. 

Emile: Thanks Brandon. Greg, the same question to you. 

Greg: Sure, and I think that concern about there being unintended negative consequences is what makes us so cautious in our science, and I appreciate Brandon for bringing up that caution.

We, we get challenges all the time where people say, you know, I live in central Nevada, what should I grow if I want to do agrivoltaics, or they'll say, you've been studying agrivoltaics for five years. Can't you just tell me which four things I should grow? And we can certainly give you ideas. And we definitely approach it, our science, by doing a range of different types of crops.

I mean, for example, we always do at least, you know, one kind of thing, like a leafy green, where you, the farmer collects and sells the leaves of the plants, versus a fruiting shrub like a tomato and a tuber, you know, and a root vegetable and an herbs. That way we can get a variety of types. But every year the climate is so different, year after year.

With some years we have really, you know, wet rainy seasons followed by a really dry season. We have to measure those same crops through a range of cycles so that we can truly understand what are the potentials and limitations with different crops. And as Brandon said, the social sciences are really underdeveloped in this entire field.

Part of what the opposition around agrivoltaics is coming from is driven by carry over opposition from photovoltaics and sometimes a lack of relationship building in the evolution of renewable energy in rural America and rural communities globally. And I hope that we're being a lot more intentional about how we integrate people into the decision making.

But in response to like what gives you hope and excitement, I think some of it is at the local level, talking to some of the families who have been you know, skeptical slash even opposed to the idea, saying that will never work. As they actually get to see an agrivoltaic site, and you don't feel massive heat coming off of the solar panels, which is one concern people have because they've just never been in or around a solar site, or there's no way a plant can grow in any kind of shade.

And then to see the amount of production that can come out of a site, that seeing is believing from the biophysical perspective, it really gives me hope that the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy are investing in research sites around the West that make for a better access for the public to see this in action.

Emile: Thanks. I really appreciate what you said about the social science and what you mentioned earlier about working with groups of people and returning to the same groups of people each year and, and building those relationships. And I think that's part of the answer to this next question I have for you, which is, what do you think it will take for agrivoltaics to become a more commonly used technology?And so, Greg, we'll start with you. 

Greg: Yeah, absolutely. I think education is the primary one. I'm amazed at how many people who live so nearby some of our research sites who've never heard of the topic, which means that we as scientists need to do a better job of speaking on podcasts and other forms of outreach.

And the other thing, because of that, one of the ways we're going to do outreach around this topic in Central Arizona and Casa Grande area is actually have, host Open Farm to Tables, where we are serving some of the foods that we've been producing in the solar array out at a site that has been used for agrivoltaics research.

The other thing is some incentives. Some of the challenges we hear from farmers in the area is they're running out of water, they absolutely cannot continue to grow as much as they have been, especially given the acreage. So in central Arizona in Pinal County, some of the farmers are getting 50 percent of the water that they have been historically for agriculture.

And so we are asking rural food producers to do the impossible, make more with less. Make more food for a growing population when it's going to be even more environmentally stressful with less water input. And if we can think of ways that ease the barriers for people to try out this on their lands, I think we're going to see wider adoption.

Because from, I've been saying the biophysical, but the hydrology, the agricultural yield, the production numbers are all there. It's more about getting over that hump to help people get in place. Other places have figured it out. I think we can too. 

Emile: Great, thanks. And Brandon, same question to you. What do you think it will take for agrivoltaics to become more commonly used?

Brandon: I, yeah, I completely agree with what Greg said. He covered it really well. I, I think I'd add, you know, having a widely distributed experiment for people to go to that contextualize the technologies with local systems, with, you know, local crops, rangeland types. And, and having that, that experience, yeah, it's, it's one experiment in one place.

And one set of data is, is probably not going to be enough to convince people of the costs and benefits in other, other contexts. So, so this is something that I think USDA is interested in promoting. There's a couple of, additional new projects featuring agrivoltaics in different parts of the country.

And I think we can, we can replicate what, what Greg has, has done there in Arizona and in some of these other landscapes, that will be a, a major force for adoption. 

Greg: I'll just add being right next door to New Mexico here. I left visiting y'all so excited about the potential because of what you just said about contextualizing the research within each of those places.

You know, thinking about the, the range of what is New Mexico, what is Arizona, what is Utah. I think a lot of times people think about the Western U.S. and with one mental image. But we know living in these places that as you go north and south, you're going to fall across all kinds of different many climates and ways of life and what crops are special and what has value, and especially the work on the, the rangeland systems, whether or not cattle can be integrated into grazing in an agrivoltaic system is the question we get almost weekly.

We've got every reason to believe there are grasses that love being in the shade. Right now they're in the shade of the mesquite tree. Is it going to notice the difference if the shade is something else? Will the cows appreciate the shade? Again, I would think so, but as you questioned, you know, what are those unintended consequences that we don't even know about? And that's why you've got to do the work, so I'm glad that you are. 

Brandon: Yep, absolutely, thanks. 

Emile: Excellent. Both of those ideas around collaboration as, as opposed to competition, when moving forward. This is a new space. We’ve mentioned it a few times in the conversation. And so, my question then would be, is there anything that we didn't ask you that you wish we would have asked?

Greg: Well, people ask us all the time, where can I learn more? And in addition to each Brandon and I, and our organizations, we represent having our own website and resources. One that we point to a lot is the AgriSolar Clearinghouse. If you just go to AgriSolar Clearinghouse online you will, if you're interested either from a renewable energy developer side or farmer side, that is a place that we point to.

And part of the reason I do that is because they've been collating so many resources about this topic, both from biophysical, but also, you know, what kinds of laws or barriers are in place around the country, but they're also connected with a lot of us doing this agrivoltaics work. And so if you're listening to this and you're in central Ohio, they will find the person who is most real like the environment that you're working in to help connect you. And we've been doing that kind of connection for the last four years, which has made lots of opportunities for us to meet people we never would have otherwise met and serve as a bit of a resource. 

Brandon: Yeah. Uh, for my part, you know, it was, it was just Greg and I, and of course, Greg is great.

He's been, he's been in this field for a really long time and as, as a thought leader but there's, we've, since we've spun up our project over the last couple of months, we've talked to a lot of other people that are doing some really innovative things and the creativity that is underway right now and in the field is phenomenal with the number of projects that are out there across the country.

So, yeah, you, of course, you don't have all day to do this podcast, but there's a lot of other people to talk to. 

Emile: This leads so nicely to a question we ask all of the experts we get to talk with, and Greg, you started to answer this before, so I'll turn it to you, Brandon. What gives you hope for the future?

Brandon: Yeah, I think hope for the future of agrivoltaics. I would say that all of this information comes together in a way that people are able to make no regrets decisions. I mean, I, you know, people are going to find that agrivoltaics are not suitable in some circumstances. And they're going to be very suitable in others.

And so once we build the technologies out, we have the optimized systems, we have the data that people are going to be able to make decisions about where to place agrivoltaic installations. And we have an idea of what the costs and benefits are, and we have consequently reached our renewable energy goals within the United States and globally as a consequence.

Emile: Excellent. Greg, is there anything you wanted to add in terms of what gives you hope for the future around agrivoltaics? 

Greg: Yes, I would say at the national level is that you know, 10 years ago, this was barely a word that was mentioned, and now it is coming up in the discourse across the Department of Energy and Agriculture, the two biggest, you know, federal influences on policy and practice and subsidies for allowing people to grow in this space, and the fact that they are funding projects, both of those agencies are funding projects around this common topic, It gives me a lot of hope because we're going to learn about both the energy dimensions and the agricultural dimensions of this topic, hopefully simultaneously and not in the historical silos, because the people who are making the decisions have to have information from both of those sources.

Because when you think about the zoning laws, it involves both of those sources. And so, from our research, we're going to be able to tell you how well different crops and animals work in these different climatic spaces and, and hopefully there'll be continued investment in terms of the socio political sciences around, you know, who is an early adopter and what makes an early adopter?

What are the levers and knobs that need to be turned around? to turn someone who may have the resources as a skeptical versus those who don't have a lot of resources because they're a farm that's barely being getting by. What are the pathways for both of those? 

Emile: So if people remember only one thing from listening to this entire podcast, what is the one thing that you would like people to remember from this conversation?And Greg, we'll go ahead and start with you. 

Greg: Great, thanks. I'd say more than anything is we got to think outside the box. And when we've done that in the past, we've been super successful. I would just say that we can move from having this food versus energy conflict that we're hearing repeatedly around rural America, and agrivoltaics is one pathway to continuing to have food production because of renewable energy.

That because of, instead of, you know, that conflict is the biggest thing that I see coming out of this conversation. 

Emile: Thanks. Brandon, same question. 

Brandon: Yeah, I would say that, you know, that a group of committed scientists are looking for ways for agricultural sustainability and energy sustainability to reinforce one another, rather than, than being competing with one another.

Emile: Sounds like a network is forming, which is exciting because it's really what's needed to advance our climate solutions. So, Dr. Brandon Bestelmeyer, Dr. Greg Barron-Gafford, thank you so much for talking with us. Both Sarah and I would like to come to one of the Farm to Table events, so we'll be following up with that.

And the links that you mentioned will be in our episode notes. Thanks. 

Greg: Thank you. 

Brandon: Thanks.

Emile: Thanks for listening to Come Rain or Shine, podcast Southwest Climate Hub 

Sarah: and the USGS Southwest CASC. If you liked this podcast, don't forget to rate or review it and subscribe for more great episodes. A special thanks to our production crew, Skye Aney and Reanna Burnett. If you want more information, have any questions for the speakers, or would like to offer feedback, please reach out to us via our website.