AGRIVOLTAICS
through,” he explained.“ Over a short period of time, the land starts to come back to life. Chicken manure is some of the best fertilizer in the world.”
Farm Resilience With their primary operations located in Butler, Georgia, Pasturebird’ s farmland was directly in the path of Hurricane Helene. But despite the storm’ s widespread destruction, Pasturebird experienced little impact.
“ During the storm, our entire area was out of power,” said Greive.“ No power can be a big problem on a chicken farm. But a couple of cool things happened. Despite 10-plus inches of rain and 50 to 75 mile an hour winds, we had very minimal impact on the farm.”
Over a three-year period, Pasturebird’ s regenerative agriculture practices improved the land’ s health, roots and vegetative cover significantly. The soil absorbed the storm’ s moisture, reducing the amount of mud runoff and erosion.
Another added benefit to solar powered coops is access to off-grid power. In the event the grid goes down, a solar powered coop can still feed, water and move birds to new pastures.
Chickens in the Sun
Greive emphasized the importance of this type of resilience in agriculture, especially for small-scale farms:
“ There’ s nobody to bail you out. You’ re dealing with live animals. They have to be fed, watered and, ideally, moved every single day. And, when a natural disaster or man-made disaster happens, having solar as a backup is wise.”
Mimicking Nature With Technology
Leaders in the regenerative agriculture space, such as Joel Salatin, emphasize the importance of embracing modern technology in such a way that mimics nature, a term known as biomimicry technology.
For Greive, this looks like a closed-loop system where animals and plants support each other, creating a sustainable and regenerative food production model.
“ It’ s a bit of a revolution where we’ re looking at old ways of doing things and using modern technology to play off of that ancient wisdom,” he said.“ In nature, animals move. If we can use and harness nature and biomimicry technologies to be more resilient and regenerative, that’ s the future of farming.”
Solar-powered chicken coops provide sustainable energy for free-range poultry farming, promoting animal welfare and environmental efficiency.
24 Winter 2024 www. chickenwhisperermagazine. com