UT NOTE: More farmland taken out of food production for energy. Corn for ethanol, now solar panels because we did not protect the farmers from the profit-first disease.
Sarah BowmanIndianapolis StarView Comments0:561:47https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.495.1_en.html#goog_1728607199
For the last week, Norm Welker has spent hours every day in the cab of his combine. He rises with the sun and travels up and down his more than 1,000 acres in northwest Indiana, something he has done for decades.
But this time, he paid particular attention to the way the light played off the stalks of corn and peaked through the trees at the edge of his land.
This will be the last year that he and his family harvests corn. But Welker will still be a farmer — he’s going to farm the sun.
“We’ve always harnessed the sun, and have enough sun to grow a corn crop,” said 62-year-old Welker, who lives and farms in Starke and Pulaski counties. “But now, we are harvesting it far more efficiently than we’ve ever done before.”
Welker is not alone: He is one of dozens of neighbors who are leasing their land for what will be the largest solar farm in the United States, right here in Indiana. At 13,000 acres — roughly 1,000 times the size of Lucas Oil Stadium — it is aptly named the Mammoth Solar project.
Unorthodox Truth 