Production of protein, power compatible on same ground
The study and advancement of modern agriculture is all about improving sustainability. A gift from Wayne and Alice O’Quin will help Mississippi State University push those pursuits into the light of a new day.
“The O’Quins are contributors to society in the truest sense of that word,” said Jeff Little, senior director of development for the Bulldog Forest program. “Their interests in conservation, combined with their generosity, will have an impact for generations. They are making the world a better place.”
Wayne grew up near Osyka, in Pike County. He earned a degree in chemical engineering from Mississippi State in 1959 and enjoyed a 38-year career with TotalEnergies, a company that specializes in oil and biofuels, natural gas, green gasses, renewables and electricity. He served as a plant manager for 26 years at facilities in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas. His wife, Alice, grew up in Brooklyn, New York and had a long career in hospital management in Kentucky and Texas.
In 2000 the O’Quins retired to Galveston, Texas, and in 2008 they donated a tract of land with great potential to MSU’s Bulldog Forest program. The 127-acre swath of timbered soil in Pike County had been in Wayne’s family since 1900. It is now under management as a wildlife habitat by Mississippi State’s College of Forest Resources and has grown to be a haven for fauna and flora alike.
Both Wayne and Alice are Texas Master Naturalists. Sustainability of the world’s wild, quiet places has long been a passion for them. Specifically, they are interested in maximizing what the land can produce. That’s where their latest gift to Mississippi State comes in—the science of agrivoltaics, the practice of using the same land for both solar photovoltaic energy generation and agriculture.
“Establishing creative ways to work between or underneath the panels, grazing compatible livestock like sheep among solar panel installations, or applying engineering tools to manage cultivated systems in confined spaces will further enhance our ability to combine solar endeavors with production agriculture.” ~ Scott Willard
The Wayne and Alice O’Quin Agrivoltaics Solar Endowed Excellence Fund in MSU’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will help explore ways to make solar applications more resilient. It will do this by working in conjunction with animal husbandry, crop production, pollinator habitat, aquaculture and more. The Wayne and Alice O’Quin Innovative Sustainability Endowed Excellence Fund in MSU’s Bagley College of Engineering will be used in the Swalm School of Chemical Engineering to provide support for educational programs related to sustainability.
The joint goal is to make the solar generation of electricity on farm and ranch land more productive and beneficial to both landowners and the world at large.
“Solar plant fields are often seen as taking productive land away from agricultural uses,” said Scott Willard, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Establishing creative ways to work between or underneath the panels, grazing compatible livestock like sheep among solar panel installations, or applying engineering tools to manage cultivated systems in confined spaces will further enhance our ability to combine solar endeavors with production agriculture.”
In the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the O’Quins’ gift will support agrivoltaics research within the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, known as MAFES. It will support creative teaching opportunities and sponsor a lecture series on the subject. It will support competitions to engage students in exploring how agrivoltaics can be integrated into Mississippi landscapes, and it will drive the sharing of knowledge on agrivoltaics overall.
In the Swalm School of Chemical Engineering, the O’Quin gift will sponsor student and faculty field trips to local industries to learn about their sustainability practices. It will support lab demonstrations and prototype-building activities, and it will cover software necessary for deep technical studies in agrivoltaics.
“Agrivoltaics is a science still in its earliest stages,” Wayne said. “Think, for example, of how aquaculture and power production might work together. In a catfish farming environment, for example, solar panels gathering energy could act also as shade, slightly reducing the temperature of the water below and so allowing it to hold higher levels of oxygen. Meanwhile, the panels could be generating electricity to run related aerators and other pumps or implements.”
By Kevin Tate, Photo Submitted
