Energy As a Third Crop

[Applause]

hey there

i made sustainability my default choice

in the year 2012

and as an energy mafia so my vision for

2030 is making energy as a third crop

for farmers

to give you more context i need to take

you through a journey

it starts with solar solar is wonderful

for the planet

indeed it is case in point is this

picture

our solar farm in the beautiful state of

karnataka

this plant is helping a textile

manufacturer

become more sustainable and do so in a

profitable way

this solar farm produces over 8 crore

units of energy per annum

enough to power over 80 000 city homes

for a year

this solar farm is making sure about 200

plus tons of co2 emissions are avoided

every year

as good as a as the work done by over

1200 plus fully grown trees

how beautiful is that i visited this

plant

in its early stages of construction and

saw the vast expanse

on which we were about to build the

solar farm

it would need over 200 plus acres of

land

and this was how it looked before the

construction began

you can see there was a lot of green and

in some farms

there were crops such as safflower

bengal gram

and black gram waiting to be harvested

the land acquired

plant commission we started generating

power

we completed the work but what stayed

with us was the fact that it was all

farm land ones

and over 50 of the land was being

actively cultivated

at the time of the construction and for

over 25 years

there is no cultivation possible there

and in all that time

there is nothing else you can do on 200

acres of that land

then it also stuck home that it is the

same situation

across a lot of solar farms india today

has over

30 000 megawatt of solar farms each

megawatt

on an average can take three and a half

to four acres of land

which means over one lakh twenty

thousand acres of land is under solar

farms as of today

take ten major crops such as rice wheat

jowar

bajra maize barley ragi tour

gurad moong and rank the top states for

producing these major crops

and you’ll see that a majority of the

states will also feature

in the top 10 list of solar producing

states

karnataka tamil nadu rajasthan telangana

andhra pradesh maharashtra gujarat

pradesh uttar pradesh punjab are those

states

what does this mean this potentially

means that a majority of that 1 lakh 20

000 acres of

land was potentially once a farmland

what more

india plans to add another 30 000

megawatt of solar farms

and trust me we will need all that solar

to power this country

it is important that government continue

to promote solar

so that our future generations can

breathe clean air

but that could also mean we will be

adding

farmland to the casualty list

here is where the challenge is the food

versus fuel debate

did you know that agricultural land in

india is shrinking

every year due to commercialization and

degradation

india lost more than 3.2 million

hectares in 20 years

and agricultural land is continuing to

decrease at a rate of 30

000 hectares per annum for various

reasons

this is concerning more so because india

provides food to 18

of the world’s population but occupies

only 2.54

of the world’s total land area and more

than 40 percent of its workforce

is engaged in agriculture there is our

next issue

what do you think happens to all these

farmers who have sold their farmlands

other landless farmers who are farm

hands with someone else

but now are left unemployed they migrate

to the cities looking for jobs

like any solar industry solar industry 2

creates employment but the rate of

employment is 0.8 jobs for

every 4 acres it occupies and since most

of these lands belong to marginal

farmers

with less than 4 acres of holding the

number

of people it could displace is between

one to two families

the collateral damage is astonishing

it doesn’t seem like a win-win at all

the narrative needs to change

a sustainable solution like solar cannot

unwittingly become

unsustainable there were three questions

that we wanted to answer

how do we add farming back to the

farmlands

how do we make the farmer a stakeholder

how do we create a solution that is

commercially viable

and scalable while we looked around the

world for inspiration

we found that a lot of research was on

to combine agriculture with solar

and most of research focused on raising

the structures high enough for the

farmer to farm his land below

it definitely made sense but there were

a few things that did not answer the

questions we had

the cost of ray structures meant it may

not be commercially viable

the data for ray structure show

inconsistent agricultural yields

it doesn’t solve for the one lakh acres

already under solar panels

so we went back to the drawing board

conventional farming

under the solar panels felt like a good

starting point

however conventional farming presented

the same set of challenges

our farmers currently face which is the

type of crops that can be grown

are specific to a region soil water

or climatic conditions added to that

fact the area that can be put to use in

a solar farm is limited

due to existing solar panel structures

and for these reasons

it may not scale for the one lakh acres

or for the future projects effectively

soil is the key in conventional farming

and we need to build something that does

not depend on soil

so that we can achieve scale and produce

as much as possible in a conventional

farm

or even more if possible in the past

decades

soilless farmings farming techniques

have come to the fore

and introduced the concept of farming in

urban spaces

we studied a variety of hydroponics and

aquaponics techniques

such as nutrient film technique and deep

water culture

etc to understand how we can adapt them

to what we are trying to achieve here

hydroponics

is a method of plant growth whereby

there is no soil medium

that the nutrients that the plants would

get usually from the soil

are instead mixed into a liquid solution

that is applied to the roots of the

plants

these concepts have gained a lot of

traction and globally

a number of firms have built urban farms

enclosed their houses containers

greenhouses to produce crops rich in

nutrients

and better in quantities however

the farming happens in a climate

controlled environment

and involves upfront cost that is

significantly higher than

conventional farming picture this

we took inspiration from these

techniques and set about coming up with

a solution

that works best for the harsh conditions

of the solar farms

and that effort led to the birth of our

smart forming solution

which is hydroponic photovoltaics

this is the picture our smart wireless

farming infrastructure

enables us to utilize existing land and

solar panels

without raising the structures that are

holding them to produce

nutrient rich crops by eliminating

dependencies on soil quality

and reducing the water requirements our

in-house

design structures contain grow bits

which act as an ecosystem

for the plants to grow healthy and

robust root system

our grow beds use food grade

non-corrosive material to avoid

contamination to the crops

the smart farming solution effectively

combines precision agriculture learnings

and applies it in a solar farm context

we are also working on technology to

augment our systems with iot

to monitor and control the parameters of

the nutrient reservoir

such as electrical conductivity ph

dissolved oxygen to maintain ideal

conditions for plant growth and reduce

manual interventions

we are also building proprietary machine

learning algorithms

based on crop specific package of

practices which would help us

in managing the yield by providing

preemptive alerts on crop loss due to

pests

and diseased diseases detected by its

image recognition system

we’ve successfully experimented with a

wide variety of crops

from leafy greens such as coriander

lettuce

to medicinal and herbal crops such as

stevia and rosemary

the results have been very encouraging

for us the team has also tested various

crops across

different sites and nutrient mixes have

been carefully monitored

in the research phase along with

collection of plant growth data

and establishing data sets for the ai

model under development

we’re extremely excited by these

developments

let us look at all the efficiencies it

can bring in first up

is land use hydroponics requires less

space as compared to soil

farming growing trays can be stacked on

one on top of the another

and plants can be placed closer side by

side than they can in soil

making it vastly more space efficient

than soil farming

it can grow the healthiest food possible

in large quantities

in the smaller space and in a

sustainable way

let’s look at stress management since

almost 90 of the pests come from the

soil

there is automatically a dramatic

reduction in pests in the hydroponic

space farm

water management water in a hydroponic

system can be recycled

the crop uses the water that runs below

each tray and this water is then

recirculated preventing both the

evaporation and wastage

which means a hydroponic farm only uses

less than 10 percent of the water a

normal farm requires

a smart hydroponic system reduces the

water requirement by as much as 95

percent of that of the conventional farm

which means it may potentially enable

farming

even in drought-hit regions

nutrient management let’s look at

nutrient management water can hold

nutrients easily compared to soil

as a system is a closed system nutrients

don’t leach away

farmers don’t need to worry about

exhausting their fields

of certain nutrients through growing the

same crop over and over

nor there is a need for crop rotation so

in demand crops can be focused on

an efficient hydroponic farm may only

use 25 percent of the

fertilizer that a regular farm uses

let’s look at productivity

fast growth and high yield can be

expected from this farming solution

the yield obtained by hydroponic method

is higher than

soil cultivation and is easy to harvest

high produced quality can be obtained

better than

soil based farming the yield per plant

could go as high as up to three times

the yield seen in traditional farming

which means more yield per unit area

as the system does not rely on soil for

nutrients

all land parcels are conducive for

installations thereby making sure

we can extend it to a majority of the

one lakh acres

what does all this mean for the farmer

though solar becomes a third crop

for the farmer he doesn’t have to

migrate

he can produce better and his income

could grow two times or more

tying into our national agenda of

doubling farmer incomes

what does it mean for the owner of the

plant in case the owner is different

from the farmer himself

he will be able to sell power from solar

to the utility firms

or private buyers while revenue from the

crops will continue to come in

a stable fashion what does it mean for

the society

solar now truly can aim to be more

sustainable

the number of jobs could go up by three

times

five times more nutrients of the crops

will lead to healthier communities

higher carbon carbon offset with farming

underneath

means our solar is greener

we are now aiming to help farmers by

generating income from solar

and owners of solar projects by bringing

farming back

to help communities and we are keen to

make it possible

in a commercially scalable way solar

will be greener than it ever was

here is what you can do help spread the

word in your communities

encourage farmers that you know to

consider solar as a third crop

have a bias towards produce from fields

which have solar as a crop

if you’re part of a corporate setup ask

your solar power suppliers

if the solar projects are sustainable

enough

and if not encourage them to look at

adding farming back to their projects

let us make every farm a solar farm

thank you

[Applause]

you