Wow.

[kathmandu@stranger.social]

@cstross

Depends on whether the crops were already getting too much sun, vs. barely enough. The places where solar panels improve yield are places where it's dry and hot. *

Places that are plenty shady and humid already, can lose production due to panels. But if the extra shade doesn't cause your crops to develop fungal diseases, the lost harvest can be balanced out by the electricity as an alternate source of income.

* https://coloradosun.com/2024/10/02/agrivoltaics-denver-botanic-gardens-chatfield-solar-power-vegetables/

[jerod@theforkiverse.com]

@cstross in matcha farms, shade is strategically added in the weeks leading up to harvest to juice chlorophyll production.

[photo55@mastodon.social]

@Kathmandu @cstross
* eg Gobi Desert

I also wonder how this may vary if the ground goes Nitrogen-deficient, fixed N often being a constraint to growth in last summer's conditions.

[ravenonthill@mastodon.social]

@cstross If only the polysilicon in many of them was not made by slaves.

[da_gut@dice.camp]

@cstross the article you linked to is click bait. If you read the original science article also linked in there it’s a hypothetical from a couple of years ago.
Solar farms might be reaching a size where they can validate the . The effects of shade below solar panels, however, are well documented. That parts legit.

[graydon@canada.masto.host]

@ravenonthill @cstross Any time we want to start factories with good union jobs making solar panels, it's not any more difficult than finding the money.

(And there's a shortage of productive investment opportunities.)

Solar PV as a technology is not defined by Chinese Communist Party policy.

[ravenonthill@mastodon.social]

@graydon @cstross Biden was working in that direction. Many of his economic programs were very good. He got no credit for them and the public complained that his good economy was bad.

Meantime, I intend to keep nagging people about slavery in China because it looks very much like we are heading for a global renewables market with slavery at its base. I regret to say that slavery seems to be making a comeback in many forms and many places.

Xinjiang: Slavery and Solar Panels

In Xinjiang, western China, the polysilicon that is used the in the inexpensive photovoltaic panels that have become so widespread is manufa...

(adviceunasked.blogspot.com)

https://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2026/02/slavery-and-solar-panels-bibliography.html

[jameswneal@mstdn.social]

@cstross Here's the link to the 2024 article cited in that piece. It's all theoretical, based on solar panels that absorb nearly 100% of the sun's heat (many are reflective), require moisture to be present in the atmosphere, and in some instances can adversely impact other regions' ecosystems. https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-solar-farms-could-provoke-rainclouds-desert

[graydon@canada.masto.host]

@ravenonthill @cstross At the Main Street level, and below, it was a bad economy. (Elite consensus to refuse to pay for labour is a real thing, and probably not fixable short of running the guillotines round the clock for a year.)

Saying "Argh, slave labour! unclean!" is correct, but wildly unhelpful. (Narrative of helplessness, supports fossil carbon "solar bad, actually" narratives, etc.)

"We should make these ourselves in ethical ways", perhaps helpful.

[ravenonthill@mastodon.social]

@graydon @cstross we need a change in public economic consciousness. Our public seems to wobble between Protestant miseriness and vulgar Marxism. It would be good if we could explain economics to the public in a way that they could get behind.

[ravenonthill@mastodon.social]

@graydon @cstross That's the vulgar Marxist explanation but employment was up, wages were up and had risen most for the people at the lowest wages levels, there was better funded healthcare. Except for shelter costs, it was the best economy in a generation for lower and middle income people. And maybe shelter costs swung public sentiment or maybe people just were reacting to the previous economy; it's still being studied. But it was a very good economy.

[photo55@mastodon.social]

@BashStKid @cstross
Some farms locally could do with roofs and gutters over parts of their fields, flooding reduced yield, sometimes to zero, and damaged soil. And roads.
Later, drought occurred. Now, leading half the rain off the field doesn't inevitably assuage a later drought, but one might hope to put some in an aquifer.
And half might not be enough - it was _very_ wet.

But.

[fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net]

@cstross not just in the desert, also in temperate regions like France:

France agrivoltaics trials show early crop and livestock gains

Data from agrivoltaic canopy trials in France, developed by energy producer TSE and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), indicate measurable temperature, water-balance, and yield effects that reinforce the role of managed agrivoltaics in farm-level climate adaptation.

pv magazine International (www.pv-magazine.com)

[ravenonthill@mastodon.social]

@graydon @cstross I think we need to keep talking about slave labor. And, yes, we should absolutely propose alternatives but we need to keep talking about it. The slave system in the United States was not abolished because of economic inefficiency; it was abolished because the slave holders were trying to spread it and because northerners were horrified by the reality of slavery.

(www.reddit.com)

[graydon@canada.masto.host]

@ravenonthill @cstross The US attempt to abolish the slave system did not work (it failed, completely) in the case of the US Civil War, which is why the US slave system is run by government entities in forced labour institutions called prisons. Such attempts generally can't work because we live in a system under selection, not a moral universe.

Effective opposition to slavery has to combine greater distribution of agency and greater power (including economic). Otherwise is gets crushed.

[nbanthony2k@mastodo.neoliber.al]

@cstross I was watching a video about this in China desert, and kind of by accident, they found that the panels provide a place for dew to condense.

Then it runs down the panel and that causes enough dew drops to concentrate in one spot to irrigate the base of the panel for plants to grow.

Without the panels the drew had no where to condense and when it didn't accumulate enough drops to sustain plants.

Kind of an interesting side effect

[rbanffy@mastodon.social]

@cstross it's nice to know our species might survive after all.

[azonenberg@ioc.exchange]

@JamesWNeal @cstross yeah you do not want 100% absorption, you want as much heat rejection as possible because panels produce more power when they're cooler.

It's an interesting concept but certainly not something being deployed at scale now. The image is probably slop or an unrelated stock photo.

[bashstkid@mastodon.online]

@Photo55 @cstross Tree and hedge planting can often help with the flooding/runoff leading to crumbly poor soil in the dry season.

[ermo@fosstodon.org]

@cstross This honestly sounds almost like terraforming?