From solar electric fences to selling solar power for profit, John S. Quarterman will talk about solar opportunities for farmers and some legal hurdles, at South Georgia Growing Local 2014:

Why solar power is the fastest growing industry in the world and how to apply it to agriculture. Financing is the main obstacle. Some ways to get financing, and at least one law that could be changed to help with that.

His conference bio:

John S. Quarterman grows pine trees and vegetables on the same south Georgia land he grew up on, with his wife Gretchen, as Okra Paradise Farms.

Partly due to a REAP grant from USDA, they have 15 kilowatts of solar panels on the farm workshop roof.

He recognizes in the exponential growth of solar power the same phenomenon he chronicled twenty years ago in the growth of the Internet. The same Moore’s Law that brought us growth like compound interest in integrated circuits, computers, the Internet, mobile phones, and now smart phones, is also bringing us exponential deployment of solar power, so fast your jaw may drop. In about a decade, solar will overtake everything, producing more power than any other source in the U.S. Solar power will win like the Internet did.

He helps to apply it to rural jobs, lower electric bills, and profit for farmers.

As Thomas Alva Edison said to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone 83 years ago:

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

Come to SOGALO2014 and hear about rural solar power.

-jsq

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