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