Chapter 15 : Funding on a Micro Level

Larger farms exist further inland by necessity. If they can obtain as much water as they need, they could be hugely profitable by virtue of their sheer size. 

So a farmer can work out how much water they need for which crop they intend to produce. If they don't have enough land for the solar panels to produce enough green energy then they need to consider upgrading to more efficient panels, using wind turbines or turning waste into green energy. Any type of green energy qualifies for the piped water allocation. The coastal corporations will give farmers an estimated figure of how much the water will cost to get to their land. The farmer just has to get creative with the green energy production to make the figures work, depending on the product they want to produce that year. If the farmer has a certainty of the supply of water then they can plan with much less risk. Banks will back them more willingly with capital investment. 

Just as Mr Morrison failed to understand the significance of battery backups to the grid (he referred to the Tesla battery at Hornsdale as a useless “big banana”), people at large may be guilty of underestimating the value of water backups to farms.  Any extra water that reaches the farm and can be stored is a blessing for when sufficient rainfall fails to occur, which Australian farmers are all too familiar with. 

If it does rain, then farmers can draw water from their dams instead of the pipes and still produce green energy for the coastal corporations. They will, in turn, receive water credits for future use. The coastal corporations pipe the water further inland, where no rain has fallen. So now farmers have two types of dams. Physical ones on their farms and water credits provided by their coastal corporate partners.

What if the soil is of such poor quality that a limited number of crops will grow on the farm? Specialise in those crops that will grow on that soil and improve the quality of the soil over time using funds received from selling green hydrogen produced on the farm, which is shipped via blimp to the end market. The lower value crop can act as a ballast for the green hydrogen.

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