Solar farming: German farmer grows berries beneath solar panels

A 33-year-old German farmer found a way to grow fruits beneath solar panels, proving that a solar farm can harvest more than just electricity. Fabian Karthaus grew up with solar energy. “My father built the first photovoltaic system on the barn roof and you could see that it worked,” he said. Now, he owns two large solar power systems with berries growing underneath one of them. Karthaus took over his father’s farm near the western German town of Paderborn five years ago. But the trained electrical engineer still works during the day as a product manager for agricultural electronics. “I can’t feed a family with the earnings from growing 80 hectares of field beans, grain, rapeseed and corn crops,” he said. There was also a significant drop in yield over the past few years because of heat and drought. “My wife and I started thinking about how we could continue to operate the farm in a meaningful way,” Karthaus said. That’s how the idea of growing berries under a solar roof with ...