Merino farmer calls for local energy hubs | Daily Liberal | August 2024 - video Dailymotion

A new campaign urging the government to invest in ‘Local Energy Hubs’ has kicked off today voiced by three regional Australian farmers' experience.

Transcript

00:00Well, to be honest, when this solar farm was built next to us, I just thought, well, that

00:06land's wasted now.

00:07I thought this is the last mob of sheep that'll ever graze on this land again.

00:12But it turns out that was all wrong.

00:15Now there's actually more sheep grazing there.

00:22The last drought went for three years, and it was horrific.

00:26So we had a massive debt, which was never going to be cleared.

00:30We could see next door, our neighbour had already signed up.

00:33We saw the benefits of the solar farm.

00:36We could see opportunity there.

00:37So yeah, there was no one really to talk to about it, because there wasn't many people

00:41that had done it.

00:42And it wasn't something that you could walk into the local pub and say, hey, g'day, fellas.

00:46Any of you know anything about solar?

00:47I'm going to sign up for my farm for solar.

00:49Well, you'd have got run out of town.

00:51If there had been a local energy hub, it would have been beneficial.

00:54It definitely would have helped us, and it would have made our decision-making a lot simpler.

00:59Hop in the tractor, mate.

01:01Put your seatbelt on.

01:06Righto.

01:07We're going to do some spraying.

01:13I just love the handle of wool.

01:15Just the softness.

01:17There's nothing more natural.

01:21I spoke to the developer of the solar farm next door.

01:23He mentioned how many times they had to mow and the cost of it.

01:26And I just said to him, well, you've got grass and I need grass.

01:29We should be able to work something out.

01:31So that's where we started our grazing under the panels.

01:36They do do better because it's a really good source of feed.

01:39The rainfall inside the solar farm is magnified purely by the no gutter runoff effect.

01:44So you can imagine in the middle of summer, it's not drying out.

01:47There's still green feed.

01:48It's still productive.

01:51We're only a couple of years into it.

01:52But it's showing a 20% increase in the wool cut of the sheep from under the panels

01:57compared to the control flock outside the panels.

02:00I like to say that panel sheep are happy sheep, which reflects in your wool growth.