For Farmers
& Landowners

Before you complain about someone signing up their land to solar, show up. Show up every day. Show up to farm every single day. Show up when your kid has sports and you can't make it because it's going to rain and you need to finish the field. Show up when there's a break in the weather and you have to plant all day and all night before the next rain hits. Show up when it's your kid's birthday but you it's harvest or planting time, and the weather is giving you a chance to get in. Show up when your equipment breaks down and you can't get parts because they're out of stock, and now you have to wait and wonder will you finish your planting or harvest. Show up when the yield is bad. Show up when the neighbors complain about the dust you make, that you are farming into the night, that your equipment is too loud. Show up when your combine catches on fire. Show up when you're praying to keep the farm going, but now you have to put your spouse or your parents in a nursing home, and because you farm, there's no help for you, and it costs you 8,000 a month for care. Show up when you try to help your child get a student loan, but because you farm, they can't get any aide. Show up when that farmer worries they will lose the farm and have nothing left for their children, and dies from the leading cause of death of farmers, because that farmer figured they were better off without them. 

This post is not to complain, but it's important that people understand why farmers sign up for solar. Small farms don't get government subsidies. They pay for everything out of pocket. Farmers don't get to control what they sell their grain for, the government gives us our price from the market. Farmers suffer when inflation causes our equipment to go up, seed, chemicals, and fertilizer to go up, and supply shortages aren't helping us either. We can't get parts, we can't get fertilizers, and it puts the whole season at risk. 

Farmers pay to farm with their lives. Time, blood, energy, emotion, no days off. Most of them don't break even, much less make a profit. Farmers that sign up for solar are wanting to keep the farm in the family, they care about the land, they don't want to see it turned into a housing development. They want their future generations to be able to farm. The farmers want to know that when they need care in their elderly years, they'll be able to afford it. That if their kids and grandchildren want to go to college, they can do it and not have crippling debt. 

When you support solar, you're supporting that farmer keeping their farm. You're giving that farmer a chance to survive. You're letting that farmer keep our country looking country and not like a suburb of Columbus. You're giving other farmers a chance to raise sheep on land, earning them an income where they can then get more land to have more sheep on, helping their farm in the process. You're giving that farmer a chance to help the community by the extra taxes from the land going to our schools, emergency services, library and townships. 

Before you complain, talk to a farmer that signed up for solar. Learn why. Know your farmer, know their reasons. Support solar.

Link to original Facebook Post