Although Spring has officially sprung, many of us are still enduring chilly temperatures. Remember to try your best to allow Winter weeds to rest in the garden until temps are consistently over 50. These ‘weeds’ as we know them are where garden pollinators will seek shelter and food in the colder days leading up to the Spring thaw. To caterpillars and busy bees, these are hardly weeds, but their first and favorite home in your garden.
Thanks to our volunteers and donors, the Teach a Person to Fish Society was able to donate an incredible 574 ready-to-eat meals and $2571 worth of dry goods and produce in the month of March. We are tremendously grateful to all of our supporters, family members, and friends who have helped us help others.
Lines at food banks are starting to grow again as the end of federal pandemic aid coincides with rising prices. About 10 percent of households surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau in early February said they sometimes or often did not have enough food to eat. That is up slightly from the early August survey, before the extended federal child tax credit expired. Also gone are federally aided unemployment benefits and stimulus payments. So while food-bank numbers are down from their pandemic peak, they are still above pre-pandemic levels.
Meanwhile, food banks themselves are struggling with higher prices for food and gas as federal programs that shored them up during the pandemic have ended. From February 2020 up to now, a truckload of canned tuna went from $46,000 to $57,000, peanut butter from $34,000 to $40,000, and diced tomatoes from $15,000 to $23,000. This is an untenable situation for food banks and community kitchens with no clear end in sight.
If you would like to know what you can do to help, please contact us at TAPTFSociety.org. We are happy to pick up packaged food donations or feel free to donate directly to the Milton Community Food Pantry, one of our closest partners.
If you or someone you know is facing food insecurity, please do not hesitate to contact us directly by replying to this email.
This information was provided by theChronicle for Philanthropy
This year’s Earth Day theme is “Invest in our Planet.” This is the moment to change it all — the business climate, the political climate, and how we take action on climate emergency. Now is the time for the unstoppable courage to preserve and protect our health, our families, and our livelihoods.
For Earth Day 2022, we need to act boldly, innovate broadly, and implement equitably. It’s going to take all of us. Businesses, governments, and citizens — everyone accounted for, and everyone accountable in a partnership for the planet.
Learn more at EarthDay.org and live every day like it’s Earth Day.
How to Grow Renewable Energy
We know what we need to grow produce: appropriate sun, nutritious soil, and clean water. And we know how to harness clean energy: wind turbines, hydroelectric grids, and solar cells. What if we were to combine the two ideas in a way that was mutually beneficial to both, a way for farmers to ‘grow’ clean energy like a crop? Agrovoltaics has the answer.
Agrovoltaics is the simultaneous use of land for both solar photovoltaic power generation and agriculture. In the simplest terms, solar panels on farmland, barns, and greenhouses. The idea has a range of applications for instance, sheep can graze around solar panel structures easily and without any modifications to their lives and beehives can certainly thrive in tandem with solar structures. Crops will benefit from extended growing seasons and protection from hail and high winds, while farmers will see a reduction in water usage and soil erosion.
In addition, agricultural land is typically more suited to the use of photovoltaic cells which actually can decrease in efficiency at high temperatures on barren land. For every two degrees Fahrenheit increase in temperature, solar panels lose nearly half a percent in efficiency. Having vegetation underneath solar panels keeps them cool because plants release water vapor through tiny pores on the underside of their leaves, a process called transpiration that cools down the plants’ leaves and the nearby air. Mutual benefits.
At this point you may be thinking, surely there is a trade-off. Covering farmland with shade must reduce yield and quality. However, in this age of climate emergency, this was not found to be the case. In many cases crop yield increased due to the shade of the solar panels mitigating some of the stress on plants caused by rising temperatures and UV damage. Careful planning of course is needed, but shade tolerant crops saw no drop in yield or nutrition when paired with solar arrays in university studies.
Even small solar grids applied to farmhouses, barns, or greenhouses can benefit the farmer by powering small electrical equipment in remote locations where there may not have been access to electricity before such as running a small well pump or irrigation system on a remote part of the property. On a larger scale, leasing their land to solar developers also brings a degree of economic security to farmers by providing them with income while we face a future of extreme weather events and climate unpredictability.
One thing is clear: Fertile ground beneath any solar array should not be left bare. “If you have those solar arrays and nothing growing, you’re losing a real opportunity there to draw down carbon to help balance the equation for greenhouse gases, in addition to losing the opportunity to grow crops or plants for pollinators,” suggested Florence Reed at Sustainable Harvest International. And we couldn’t agree more.
Read more about how agrovoltaics are helping farmers all over the world:
How Solar Panels Could Help Save Struggling Farms
Food Crops Do Better in Shade of Solar Panels
The Farmer’s Guide to Going Solar
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