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Farmer finds occurrence grazing sheep connected star farms
In a dusty Texas field, Chad Raines surveys his caller harvest — sheep.
"Never successful my wildest dreams did I ever ideate that I would beryllium a shepherd," Raines said.
The Raines household has farmed fabric for 4 generations. But years of atrocious harvests and debased prices drove him to springiness it up for good.
"After astir 3 to 4 years of conscionable not making immoderate progress, conscionable not adjacent breaking — I mean we were losing wealth and that indebtedness was rolling over, adding to it each year. So I had to look astatine doing thing different. I had to deliberation extracurricular the box," Raines said.
So helium became portion of a increasing trend: abandoning accepted farming for what's called solar grazing, renting retired sheep arsenic tract mowers for solar farms.
Green vigor institution Enel North America owns a star workplace adjacent Waco, Texas. With much than a cardinal panels, it's 1 of the largest successful the U.S.
"The sheep enactment erstwhile it's raining, the sheep enactment erstwhile it's muddy, sheep enactment astatine night," said Adam Sotirakopoulos, who runs the site.
The sheep bash astir of the work, keeping vegetation distant from the panels portion their owners gain dependable paychecks.
Farming has ever been a gamble, but the likelihood person gotten worse recently. A 2024 U.S. Agriculture Department study recovered adjacent to 40% of tiny and mid-sized farms operated astatine a nonaccomplishment the erstwhile year.
"The tiny farming is going away. It's the large companies, the bigger farmers are the ones who tin workplace a small spot amended based connected the economies of scale," Raines said.
Between debased prices and tiny yields, Raines says if he'd grown cotton, helium would person mislaid astir $200,000 past year. Instead, helium cleared a nett of adjacent to $300,000, grazing 6,000 sheep crossed 20,000 acres portion increasing a concern helium tin yet walk connected to his sons.
"One is simply a assemblage graduate. One is successful college, and erstwhile helium graduates, he's going to travel to the workplace arsenic well. There's plentifulness of enactment for each of us," Raines said.
Janet Shamlian is simply a CBS News analogous based successful Houston, Texas. In a vocation that spans 3 decades, Shamlian has covered galore of the biggest nationalist and planetary stories of our time.
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