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MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A brand new concept is mixing vitality and agriculture to energy a few of our neighbor’s properties.
Nokomis Energy has dozens of renewable vitality initiatives throughout the Twin Cities that serve Xcel Power clients. However it’s piloting a brand new venture that blends photo voltaic vitality and sheep on Minnesota land.
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Nestled on this quiet patch that was once low-yield farmland in Waseca, there’s a conflict of previous and new. Arlo Hark’s flock of sheep is tough at work within the new photo voltaic backyard. They’re grazing — primarily mowing the garden and churning the land — to assist restore a local prairie habitat beneath the panels.
“Sheep have their very own specific form of ability set,” mentioned Hark, proprietor and operator of Cannon Valley Graziers.
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(credit score: CBS)
It’s a part of a rising pattern to discover a second objective for land beneath renewables, in line with Julian White, a associate at Nokomis Power.
“Minnesota’s actually been a frontrunner in saying, ‘Effectively, can’t we use that land for one thing extra than simply rising grass?’ And so we consider the land as one thing that we now must take care of. We’ve gotta be a great neighbor to that farmer, that neighborhood,” White mentioned. “In numerous methods it’s form of like hiring a landscaper. It’s like, ‘Hey, I’m not hiring a mower, I’m hiring the sheep man.’ It’s not like persons are working round with big flocks of sheep immediately, however they’re constructing them. It’s actually entrepreneurial.”
Name it a contemporary model of agriculture, increasing applied sciences of the long run whereas restoring landscapes of the previous
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Hark’s sheep spent three weeks on the Waseca farm. He strikes them from web site to web site with a livestock trailer.
