Dear Editor,
Miriam Marcus outlines for us “unenlightened” Tri-City Times readers who haven’t the good sense to embrace green ideology and mentality. She outlines how can we continue to want to appreciates the aesthetics of flowing waves of grain, green fields, flowers and fauna? Why do people move from house next to house, paved streets, and shopping center pavement areas ad nauseam? Why can’t we embrace endless rows of solar panels taking choice farmland out of production; land forever ruined for agricultural production and family housing once the solar “farm” ceases to be economically sound. The soil can never recover from compaction and contamination from the panels, and contaminants that come from shedding of panel material into the soil.
While these panels are said to have up to a 40 year life, frankly speaking will advances in technology make obsolete solar panels? Some kind of better system of energy production must come as just as we pave land for parking lots, destroying productive farmland with solar panels that will come back to bite us when crop production goes down. It has been said that we could be one world wide crop failure from world wide famine. Could that happen? I don’t think we would look forward to that.
The attack from the “green” crowd condemns pesticides, animal husbandry, modern farming in total. Returning to subsistence farming and pre-modern agriculture would put the world into starvation. Period. No discussion on that. The United States feeds the world; we must be proud and pat American farmers on the back.
“Global warming” used to be the cry from the environmentalists; it has been re-labeled as “climate change.” If anyone believes climate change is not natural ought to have talked to my Dad who told me of a week in 1936 when 105 degree temperatures prevailed. Does anyone remember “climate gurus” of the 1970 prediction of a year 2000 ice age? In terms of wind what about the Flint-Beecher F5 tornado of 1953 killing 116 people, injured 844, causing $19 million damage (1953 dollars). I remember the farm damage. Of course how about that propane, natural gas, or electric bill that is less? Or the longer spring, summer, and fall seasons? A crop scientist from Perdue University outlined in a seminar in 2021 how “climate change” Midwest weather will give farmers longer seasons and higher crop yields.
Everything is a trade off but all in all fossil fuels will still be used Ms. Marcus. Alternate energy is a help. If solar panels are our only energy solution, put them in low production areas, or the city where people are accustomed to ugly pavement and endless stores, keep our natural setting.
A Proud Farmer
— David Naeyaert
Allenton
