Harrisburg – Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding lately launched steering for landowners contemplating photo voltaic manufacturing on farms and in Pennsylvania’s rural communities.
The information outlines the Wolf Administration’s help for applied sciences that create jobs and generate farm revenue with out compromising meals and fiber manufacturing. Photo voltaic power is a climate-smart know-how that achieves objectives whereas decreasing emissions and serving to to scale back the destructive results of local weather change.
“Pennsylvania’s farmland is a beneficial useful resource for producing meals, defending the environment, and feeding our economic system,” stated Redding. “Photo voltaic power manufacturing has nice potential for producing electrical energy to energy farm operations and advance Pennsylvania’s transition to a clear power future. When correctly deliberate, well-placed and correctly upkeep, photo voltaic manufacturing doesn’t compromise or cut back beneficial farm sources, reasonably it enhances them.”
Points guiding enterprise determination making embody:
- Sustainable website choice prioritizes rooftops, parking tons or brownfields over agricultural or forest land, avoiding high quality land places altogether.
- Upkeep that protects the soil and pollinators via native vegetation with out invasive species; provides precedence to grazing in comparison with mowing, paying farmers for the service; and consists of decommissioning plans to totally restore any land in a undertaking’s completion.
- Integrating power and agricultural manufacturing in a manner that’s complementary reasonably than aggressive.
The steering outlines extra concerns for farm homeowners together with the impression of photo voltaic manufacturing on the farm’s enrollment in preferential tax applications, preserved farm standing, native zoning, environmental permits and conservation plans and different points.
The entire information, together with a listing of ceaselessly requested questions and extra sources for going photo voltaic, could be discovered on the division’s web site, agriculture.pa.gov.
For extra data on climate-smart methods for presidency, group leaders, agriculture and different companies, go to the Pennsylvania Local weather Motion Plan. Discover extra data, funding, and different sources for making your farm extra productive and sustainable on the State Conservation Fee’s pages at agriculture.pa.gov.
