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Can renewable energy projects find homes on Mississippi farms?

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mississippitoday.org – Alex Rozier – 2024-11-13 09:29:00

Abbott Myers has been farming on his land in the north Mississippi Delta since 1969. Between the rising costs of everything from land to equipment to chemicals, as well as the toll of recent droughts, Myers knows his industry is in a precarious place.

“The next couple of years are really going to be some hard years in agriculture it looks like,” he told Mississippi Today over the summer. “Unless something changes.”  

With a growing market for clean energy and a medley of financial obstacles for modern agriculture, farmers in Mississippi and elsewhere are exploring the potential of putting renewable power projects on their land. 

Earlier this year, energy company AES partnered with Amazon to open the state’s first utility-scale wind power facility on land that includes Myers’ farm. Myers, who lives in the small town of Dundee, admitted that he’s not much of a renewable energy enthusiast himself – “They’re too inefficient,” he said – but he was thrilled by the business opportunity. He’s being compensated, he said, for not only the space but with a cut of the power revenue, too. 

Abbott Myers stands in front of wind turbines on his farmland in Dundee, Miss., on Oct. 14, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Relative to a solar farm, he explained, wind turbines don’t take up much space. There are 19 turbines scattered across 1,600 acres of his farm, but just about 10 of those acres will be unfarmable, Myers said. By next year each of the machines will be surrounded by the rice he’s growing. 

“I had a good friend come by and tell me I was ruining the aesthetic value of the Mississippi Delta skyline with these ugly things sticking up 700 feet,” he said. “Well, I told him we got transmission lines, we got cell phone towers sticking up everywhere. I can’t see a whole lot of difference in that, but some people don’t like them.”

Myers said he had some concerns going into the endeavor, such as noise from the turbines or their threat to flying birds. After looking at some research, though, he found out that “a lot more birds are killed by kitty cats than by wind turbines.”

“You’d be amazed how many kitty cats kill birds,” he said, adding that his house is within half a mile from the turbines and he mostly never hears them.

Elsewhere in the state, farmers are looking into the potential of “agrivoltaics,” a growing practice that merges farming with solar power generation. Kendall Garraway and Ted Kendall head their family’s Bolton-based company, Gaddis Farms, and recently leased land mostly made of pine timber to a solar developer. 

Farmland in Dundee, Miss., is overlooked by rotating wind turbines on Oct. 14, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

They’re unsure exactly what kind of farming they’ll be able to do around the solar panels – traditional row crops like soybeans and cotton are out of the picture – but they believe there’s potential to have grazing animals like sheep or a pollinating setup with honeybees. Either way, the solar panels, managed by Apex Clean Energy, will bring in a new source of revenue.

“We just saw this as a further diversification of our operation,” Kendall said, explaining that the market for pine timber has gone downhill in recent years. “You can’t get anybody to pay you for pine timber that needs thinning.” 

Protesters against the building of a solar farm in their area gathered outside the Chancery Court building, Monday, June 17, 2024. The Hinds County Board of Supervisors voted 3 – 2 in favor of the solar farm. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

Many nearby residents, though, weren’t pleased with the decision and protested Hinds County’s approval of the solar project earlier this year (one protestor is appealing the move in circuit court). Their objections ranged from the panels being an eyesore to the potential impact on the surrounding wildlife and to the land itself. 

“A lot of the stuff that people are worried about, like screening and cleanup… We’re not planning on leaving,” Garraway said, adding that the project will include wildlife-friendly fencing and that, under their contract, any cleanup of the project would ultimately fall on Apex. “We’re not looking to devalue our property.” 

The agreement with Apex lasts for 30 years, Kendall said, and he feels comfortable that they could still farm on the land again if they decide not to renew the lease. 

Commissioner of Agriculture Andy Gipson, discusses the current status of farming and its future in the state, Monday, Nov. 27, 2023 at the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

Others, like Agriculture and Commerce Commissioner Andy Gipson, worry that the expansion of solar facilities especially may displace farmland. During a “Solar Summit” the Public Service Commission held over the summer, Gipson quoted a 2022 study projecting that 83% of the country’s new solar projects will likely end up on farms. His concern, he explained, is that solar companies are using temporary federal funds to take advantage of a struggling agriculture industry.

“Farmers are being faced with these pressures, they’re being approached with financial payments that would be many times what (they would make) continuing to farm that land,” Gipson said. “One of the questions we as a state have to answer is, what happens when that money dries up?

“We understand there is a place for solar in our power grid, but we also must consider the long term impacts on agriculture. For every acre we convert to solar energy, that is an acre of land we do not have or may not have for food production.” 

Others are less concerned. Ex-Central District Public Service Commissioner Brent Bailey, for instance, said later at the Solar Summit that existing and proposed solar projects make up just a small fraction of the state’s farmland and yet provide significant public economic benefits. 

Wind turbines are seen near powerline transformers on farmland in Dundee, Miss., on Oct. 14, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

“We actually rank 37th in the nation as far as the amount of solar installed in Mississippi, our four neighboring states have more solar on the ground and operational than we do,” Bailey said. “So the perception that we have all this solar just coming up everywhere, and the timescales for development, it’s misleading, I think.

“Solar farms actually occupy 0.056% of (Mississippi’s) agricultural land… If all projects approved and under review are built, still only 0.22% of agricultural land will be impacted. These projects total $4.5 billion in private sector investments in Mississippi, leading to millions of dollars of local revenues to public schools and county budgets.” 

The potential for renewable projects on farmland has also caught the eyes of the state’s academics. Last year, a Mississippi State University student began working with the company Cubico at its solar plant near Greenwood to study how well turfgrass can grow alongside the panels. 

Cory Gallo, assistant dean for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at MSU, explained that the dual purpose of farming on a solar company’s land can deliver financial benefits in both directions. 

“Whether it’s animals (that graze the land) that can be sold for protein, or turf that’s sold as a product, that’s a win economically,” Gallo said. “You have soil (around the panels) that’s less erodible, you’re managing the land. There’s a lot of overlap there in that it’s a benefit for the (solar companies), and also a win for farmers and food production and environmental management. Which, in my mind, is the best of both worlds.”

Wind turbines tower above silos on farmland in Dundee, Miss., on Oct. 14, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Gallo clarified that he doesn’t advocate for or against the practice. He said it’s important to mitigate any impacts to surrounding natural life, and said he hopes the university’s research will help inform landowners interested in using their land for wind or solar farms. 

“How do you preserve the character of a place at the same time you’re doing these (projects)?” he said. “That comes back to leaving environmental corridors for habitat as well as water quality, which could be a good practice that helps to mitigate the impact of essentially clear cutting a large area of land. At the end of the day, these (facilities) are in large parcels that change the nature of what’s on the ground.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

Gov. Reeves announces $110 million in economic development efforts

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mississippitoday.org – Taylor Vance – 2024-11-13 16:58:00

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday announced that state agencies are disbursing over $110 million toward economic development, infrastructure upgrades and workforce development around the state. 

The funding for the projects is coming from the state Legislature, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority, the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission and the federal government. 

“We’ve secured billions in new private-sector investment and created thousands of jobs across the state,” Reeves said. “The funding we announced today will go a long way toward continuing Mississippi’s economic momentum and will help create more high-paying job opportunities for Mississippians across the state.” 

The bulk of the spending will go toward developing and improving industrial sites, which are often used to entice manufacturing companies to locate or expand operations in the state. If these sites have adequate infrastructure near them, companies are more likely to locate there.

Despite new investment in the state, Mississippi continues to grapple with one of the lowest rates in the nation of people who are actively seeking work or employed, at 53.9%. 

State Economist Corey Miller said at a legislative hearing last week that one of the reasons Mississippi is also experiencing a relatively low unemployment rate of 2.8% is because people have stopped looking for jobs. 

Reeves said on Wednesday that Mississippi may have a low percentage of people looking for jobs because the state has a relatively low cost of living and some families can afford to have only one income. 

“If an individual doesn’t want a job, the government ain’t going to force them to get a job,” Reeves said. “And that’s just a reality.” 

Still, the governor believes Mississippi can improve its labor force participation rate by improving education and providing people with better work skills. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Groups seek a new hearing on a Mississippi mail-in ballot lawsuit

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mississippitoday.org – Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press – 2024-11-13 15:20:00

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal appeals court panel incorrectly interpreted federal and state laws when it ruled that Mississippi cannot count mail-in ballots that are cast and postmarked by Election Day but arrive a few days later, two groups argue as they seek a new hearing.

Attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans are asking the entire 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling that a portion of the court issued Oct. 25.

The ruling did not affect the counting of ballots for the Nov. 5 election because the three-judge panel noted that federal court precedents discourage court actions that change established procedures shortly before an election.

However, the case could affect voting across the U.S. if the Supreme Court ultimately issues a ruling.

The attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans argue in court papers filed Friday that the panel of judges “incorrectly suggested that post-election day ballot receipt deadlines are a recent invention.”

“In fact, the practice of counting ballots cast by election day but received afterward goes back to the Civil War, when many states permitted soldiers to vote in the field before sending their ballots to soldiers’ home precincts,” attorneys for the two groups wrote.

Many states have laws that allow counting of ballots that are cast by Election Day but received later, the attorneys wrote.

“Far from making any attempt to preempt these laws, Congress has acknowledged and approved of them for more than five decades,” they wrote.

The three-judge panel of the conservative appeals court reversed a July decision by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had dismissed challenges to Mississippi’s election law by the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others.

Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, wrote on his election law blog that the ruling by the appeals court panel was a “bonkers opinion” and noted that “every other court to face these cases has rejected this argument.”

Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.

The list of states that allow mailed ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day includes swing states such as Nevada and states such as Colorado, Oregon and Utah that rely heavily on mail voting.

In July, a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit over counting mailed ballots in Nevada. The Republican National Committee has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to revive that case.

Guirola wrote that Mississippi’s law does not conflict with federal election laws. The suit challenging the Mississippi law argued that the state improperly extends the federal election and that, as a result, “timely, valid ballots are diluted by untimely, invalid ballots.”

Guirola disagreed, writing that “no ‘final selection’ is made after the federal election day under Mississippi’s law. All that occurs after election day is the delivery and counting of ballots cast on or before election day.”

Although the Mississippi challenge was led by Republicans and Libertarians, there is bipartisan support for the state’s practice. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch is defending the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Michael Watson, in the lawsuit. Both are Republicans.


Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Surely, Shorty Mac would have an opinion on the LSU tiger controversy

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mississippitoday.org – Rick Cleveland – 2024-11-13 14:44:00

There’s been quite the controversy next door in Louisiana where, at Gov. Jeff Landry’s insistence, a live tiger was on display in Tiger Stadium last Saturday night at an LSU football game for the first time in eight years.

Rick Cleveland

Tiger or not, Alabama pummeled LSU 42-13. Since then, Landry has defended the renting a tiger named Omar Bradley from a Florida exotic zoo to put on display at the game.

Mike the Tiger — actually, this was was Mike VI — died in 2016, and LSU decided to end the practice of having a live tiger present at football game. It was part of the lore of Tiger Stadium and it could be intimidating for opposing players: a huge, growling Tiger parked right outside the visitor’s locker room. Usually, there was a microphone in the cage.

Take the case of the late, great Thomas “Shorty” McWilliams, Mississippi State superstar of the mid-1940s, who played as an 18-year-old freshman for the first time at Tiger Stadium on Oct. 21, 1944. Old as I am, I am too young to have ever seen McWilliams play, but I wish I had. My daddy told me he was the best player he ever saw, and he saw thousands in a life of following football. I know this: The man they called “Shorty Mac” was the only four-time All-SEC player in league history, and it’s difficult to imagine in today’s college football landscape there’ll ever be another one.

Thomas “Shorty” McWilliams Credit: Mississippi State athletics

What follows is the story, told firsthand by Shorty Mac, when he was interviewed in 1995 by the good folks at Communications Arts who were putting together exhibits for the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Museum. To set the stage, McWilliams was punting out of the end zone, near the visitor’s locker room at Tiger Stadium, in pregame warm-ups.

We’ll let Shorty Mac take it from there: “Unbeknownst to me, they rolled up Mike the Tiger in that cage right behind me. I didn’t know he was there and that 500-pound tiger roared. Oh, he roared at the top of his lungs. It scared me so bad. It scared the (bleep) out of me. I ruined myself. I had to play the whole game in those pants.”

You can watch and listen to McWilliams tell that and other stories on the football kiosk at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Museum. Now then, here’s the rest of the story from that night in Baton Rouge. Shorty Mac apparently recovered nicely from that pregame scare. He scored both touchdowns in a 13-6 Mississippi State victory over Coach Bernie Moore’s Tigers, who included a young quarterback named Y.A. Tittle, later one of the great NFL stars of the 20th century. Afterward, Moore told reporters the only way to stop McWilliams “is to not schedule Mississippi State. He killed our defense.”

McWilliams was the game’s leading rusher and passer. Indeed, he led the SEC in scoring with 84 points as a freshman. McWilliams played the 1945 season at Army, then returned to State to play his final three seasons of college football. 

Back to the present: Gov. Landry, speaking Monday night, said he regretted that the live tiger was the only tiger who showed up for the Alabama game, which was every bit as one-sided as the final score indicates. As reported in The Athletic, Landry said, “I had more people come up to me saying they remembered Mike the Tiger more than some of the great plays in Tiger Stadium… It’s about tradition. At the end of the day, the woke people have tried to take tradition out of this country. It’s tradition that built this country.”

I won’t take a side in that controversy, but I sure would love to here what Shorty Mac would say.

Two more Shorty Mac vignettes before we close:

  • The late Dick Smith, a sports writer and later a newspaper owner, told me about one of Shorty’s games at Meridian High in 1943. “Meridian was playing Tupelo for the Big Eight Conference championship,” Smith said. “The first seven times Shorty touched the ball, he scored. Short runs, long runs, kick returns, didn’t matter. Every time he got the ball he scored. The eighth time he touched it, he ran 70 yards until he pulled his hamstring and went down on the two-yard line. By then, Meridian was so far ahead, they didn’t need him.”
  • The late Edward “Cookie” Epperson told me this one at Shorty Mac’s funeral in January 1997. Epperson was Shorty’s roommate at State and one of his best pals. Said Epperson: “Shorty was enjoying a hot shower after practice when a couple of players sneaked an opossum into the shower with him. That possum hissed and Shorty flew out of there. He didn’t bother to get his clothes or even a towel. He ran past the secretary and on outside. He never ran faster.”

Shorty Mac wasn’t afraid of the biggest, baddest linebackers, but he apparently did fear critters whether they roared or hissed.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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