Yuza Town Circular Agriculture: The Progressive Grain Barn That Solar-Dries Rice and Sells Electricity, and the Agricultural Cooperative

(Background) Japan Consumers' Co-operative Union (Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union) and the Yuza Town agricultural cooperative in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, have built a 45-year partnership of mutual support, and Yuza Town has developed a complete circular agriculture based on paddy rice. This is the third in the series (to read the previous articles, please click here).

Solar power dries the rice, and you can even sell electricity to make money

To put circular agriculture into practice, the Shonai Green Agricultural Cooperative has also actively considered ways to increase energy self-sufficiency, drawing on natural energy (solar power, small-scale hydropower, wind power), and striving to raise the fertilizer self-sufficiency rate. The fuel used by field tractors has also begun to use rapeseed oil, and the used rapeseed oil can then be returned to the Yuza farmland.

In 2010, the Shonai Green Agricultural Cooperative used the "Agricultural, Mountain and Fishing Village Revitalization Project Subsidy" to complete the Yuza Central Rice Warehouse drying and storage facility, using a solar power system, installing 896 photovoltaic panels on the roof, with an area of about 1,100 sq m, a system capacity of 160 kW, and an annual power generation capacity of 156,000 kW.

The electricity generated from solar power is used to dry rice and soybeans. The power for equipment, lighting and air conditioning within the plant all comes from the solar power system. Sometimes surplus electricity can be sold to a commercial power company, or insufficient electricity is supplemented from commercial power. The total cost of this project was more than 1.4 billion yen, of which more than 700 million came from national treasury subsidies, and the other 700 million was raised by the local agricultural cooperative itself.

Series reading:

With rice throughout, Yuza Town's circular agriculture (1) Encounter with Japan's consumers' co-operative

With rice throughout, Yuza Town's circular agriculture (3) The advanced rice warehouse and agricultural cooperative